Let's Make a Change
by Rebekah Reynolds
Summary: Jack has run off with the doctor, Everything is changing and the team need each other more than ever. Set between seasons 1&2, sequel to Let's start again
1. Has Ianto Changed?

Title: **Let's Make a Change**  
>Category: TV Shows » Torchwood<br>Author: Rebekah Reynolds  
>Language: English, Rating: Rated: T<br>Genre: Romance/Friendship  
>Published: 07-25-11, Updated: 11-20-11<br>Chapters: 13, Words: 30,269

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1: Has Ianto Changed?<strong>

* * *

><p>It was 8am and Ianto was in the locker room in the HUB trying to dry himself off before the rest of the team got in. He had been coming in later over the past few weeks, he was still earlier than everybody else and he usually spent his extra time in the mornings staring at his kitchen clock until it was time to go to work but he was determined that he wasn't coming in as early as he used to any more, a 7am start was actually quite ridiculous if he didn't finish till eleven and it was one of the many changes he had decided to make in his life. Another of these changes was not keeping spare suits at the HUB, he was regretting that this morning as he had walked to work in a rainstorm but even if he did have to spend the day in jeans and a t-shirt it was better than feeling like he always had to be prepared for everything. He had thrown out his check lists and schedules as well as three of the five first aid kits he kept in his flat - there was such a thing as being over-prepared.<p>

Changed and dry, Ianto walked exited the locker room through the gym which had been his project for the last month. Remodelling the disused rooms adjoining the shooting range which hadn't been used in over a century had been difficult without a building crew but he had managed, and he had found that by the time the gym was complete, he had little need for the free weights and half of the other "boys equipment" as Gwen had called it as he had toned himself up while working on the new rooms. So this morning he passed by the weights, the treadmill and the punch bag and walked through an open set of double doors to a second large room, this one devoted to gymnastics equipment. It hadn't been in his original plan but Tosh had once told him how much she loved gymnastics at high school so he added a beam and various other items to his shopping list and made sure that the floor was padded to minimise the risk of injury. Barefoot and dressed in the crumpled jeans and t shirt which had been stuffed into the bottom his locker Ianto pulled himself up onto the beam and went through a basic routine he had learned from Tosh the day before and was almost finished when Owen's voice came over the speakers he had set up in the room, it was easier than everyone having to wear their headsets while they work out.

"Tea boy! If you're done dancing about down there I'm gagging for a coffee" Ianto just rolled his eyes and jumped down, landing with his knees bent and a smile at how much his dismount had improved from the first time when he all but fell off the beam.

* * *

><p>By 0930 the entire team - including Gwen – were in the HUB, Ianto passed out the first round of coffees and headed up to the Tourist office to open it up for the day. As he opened the door he was surprised to find a man stood on the doorstep apparently waiting for him to open.<p>

"Erm, Hi" Ianto had never had a customer waiting for the office to open before, and that wasn't the only thing that was odd. - Early morning customers usually consisted of older women or walking tours of Chinese tourists taking a break from snapping pictures of bins. This guy couldn't be older than 25 and looked like he'd just stepped out of a magazine, if the man hadn't been soaked to the skin from the downpour which he himself had been caught in earlier that morning then Ianto might have thought that he had drifted off and he was having a dream fuelled by the month of sexual frustration he was currently suffering from.

"Hey Ianto" The man moved to get past the dumbstruck Welshman and inside the office forcing the receptionist to take a step backwards to let the visitor in out of the rain, as they moved inside they pressed together and Ianto hurried back behind his desk to avoid the pull he felt towards a total stranger.

"So, how can I help you today?" he said, handing the man a hand towel he kept in the little room beyond the office, his guest took it gratefully and rubbed it on his head; leaving his blonde hair messy but no longer dripping onto the carpet.

"I'm looking for a map, I've been in town for a while but I keep getting turned around" his accent was strange; Ianto couldn't place it because it sounded like a little bit of everything. Ianto gave the man a map, took back his towel and a few minutes later the gorgeous blonde had gone back out into the rain leaving Ianto feeling that he should _really_ take Tosh up on her offer of taking him out clubbing, he may even ask Owen to go with him as the man might be a better person to go out on the pull with.

* * *

><p>The day passed quickly, Ianto had gone out with the team to respond to a big rift spike. They had tracked a lost alien soldier who had been pulled through the rift to Splott, the creature had been confused and in the end Owen had shot it with a tranquilliser to transport to back to the cells rather than trying to calm it down where it could potentially harm the public. Ianto spent the rest of the day with Tosh and her translation program until the soldier apparently poisoned himself in his cell, choosing to end his life rather than being held captive. Tosh had been quite upset and Ianto had followed her downstairs where he found her on the beam going through a pretty complicated routine, she didn't react when he came in and he moved to stand beside the beam, spotting her in case she should fall. She completed the routine she was doing and sat down on the beam so that she was looking down at her friend, neither of them said anything Ianto just lifted his arms and helped her down.<p>

"We're going out"

Tosh looked up at him, confused. "What?"

"Clubbing. We are going to have fun, and act like idiots and forget all about work" The way Tosh smiled up at him made him feel almost guilty that he had really wanted to go out to pick up whoever he could to scratch the itch that had been bugging him for the last few weeks but he found that al he could do was smile back and listen as she chattered contentedly about where she wanted to take him and how much fun they were going to have.

At 930, after they both stopped off at home to get changed Tosh and Ianto found themselves queuing outside ClubX, a popular gay bar on Charles street, for a Wednesday night it was pretty packed but they reached the front of the queue at a few minutes before ten so didn't have to pay a cover charge, Tosh was apparently friends with some of the staff .Inside they stuck together and made their way down to the bar where Ianto got them some shots pretty quickly by flirting with the bartender; a man in his late twenties dressed in painfully tight black jeans and a white vest top. Ianto had decided on decided on jeans for the evening as well, these had been the ones that Jack always liked but he refused to stop wearing them just because Jack was gone, they were dark grey and were tight enough in the right places that he soon found that he didn't need to buy drinks, he and Tosh were getting enough booze for free from random people at the bar. 20 minutes and eight shots later they decided to take a break, splitting up to find partners on the dance floor. Tosh was blushing like crazy and dancing with a student who she knew was far too young for her while Ianto found himself moving to the music with a tall blonde who after a few drinks and with the dim lighting of the club Ianto couldn't tell if it was the man who had come into the tourist office this morning and had given Ianto something to fantasize about all day, his partner seemed to notice the physical effects of the memory and Ianto found himself being led off the dance floor to somewhere a little quieter.

* * *

><p>The next morning Tosh woke up for the second time in a month cursing the inventors of Sambuca. Before she opened her eyes she knew that she wasn't at home and could feel the warmth of another person beside her but couldn't contain her surprise when she opened her eyes to see that there were three other people lying spooned together on Ianto's king size bed. The messy brown hair at the far end of the bed belonged to Ianto but she could not identify the other two people, the man next to Ianto had short blonde hair and was wearing a black t shirt and red boxers and the man next to her was dark haired, bare chested and looked about 19. Groaning she got out of bed and phoned Owen to let him know that they wouldn't be in till late.<p>

By 11 o'clock when Ianto was finally in a fit state to go in to work they had managed to get their "dates" out of Ianto's flat. Tosh was glad to see the practically pubescent student go and was glad she had only gone as far as kissing him but the Viking like blonde who Ianto had spent far too long in the toilets with last night had left Ianto his number before he left.

"So" Tosh said as they walked out of Ianto's apartment building "thanks for taking me out last night, and you and Sven seemed to really hit it off"

"Was that his name?" Tosh was shocked, she had never known Ianto to get involved with someone so casually, from what she had seen in his mind when she had the pendant he hated casual relationships.

"Look, I had a lot of fun but maybe you should go with Owen next time, I don't really like picking people up in bars – after Mary I'm a little suspicious of them"

"Sure" Tosh was starting to get freaked out by how quiet Ianto was being this morning, it was like he wasn't even listening to her.

After they arrived at the HUB Ianto spent most of the day in the archives while Tosh got to work on a computer program she hadn't quite finished and deleted photo's she ad been tagged in last night from her facebook account before Owen could find them and laugh at her for it.

Gwen spent most of the day in the Tourist office, (they took it in turns now that Ianto was a field agent) and the only interesting thing she saw was a delivery for Ianto from a flower company, there was a small bouquet of yellow roses and a card that read;

_Ianto, I had a lot of fun last night and I hope to see you again soon. I hope that we can be friends, Sven XOX_

Gwen's gossip sense was going crazy as she ran down to the HUB to show Tosh and ask her what had happened last night.

* * *

><p><strong>AN okay, well here's the first chapter of the sequel to Let's start again, if you haven't read that then I would recommend doing so.**

**So…what do you think? Who the hell is Sven and why is he so interested in Ianto? (other than the fact that he's hot and welsh that is)**

**PS/ club X is an actual gay bar in Cardiff, I'm not going to be detailed in my description of it or anything I just like to use real locations as much as possible, and yes I know they're not open on a Wednesday but this is fiction guys... plus how awesome would it be if they were? **


	2. A Big Change

**Chapter 2: A Big Change**

* * *

><p>In the depths of the Torchwood HUB, in the maze of shelves and corridors that makes up the archives was Ianto Jones' office. His large desk faced the door but was hidden behind tall shelves which served the dual purpose of giving him easy access to the files stored there and allowing him some cover from the CCTV camera over the door, since he rearranged the furniture about six weeks ago half of his office was now hidden from the electronic eyes of the HUB security system, giving him a little more privacy. Ianto likes it down here. The quiet is a contrast to the constant stream of questions he has faced from Gwen since those damned flowers were delivered yesterday morning.<p>

He looked over at them now, half a dozen yellow roses, which if Tosh was correct, represented the friendship Sven had asked for. He couldn't say that they weren't nice it was just weird. Nobody had ever bought him flowers before. He really hadn't expected to see Sven again and if he was honest he had got everything that he'd wanted from him in the toilets of the club. Standing, he looked down at the blooms sat in a vase on his desk, lifted them out of the water he threw them into the bin, tossing the card with Sven's note and phone number on it in after them.

Right now all Ianto wanted to do was sleep. He had been aching inexplicably all day and lay down on the couch at the back of his office, praying that he was just tired and wasn't coming down with the flu. Almost immediately Ianto lost consciousness, maybe an hour's sleep would put him right.

* * *

><p>In the main HUB Tosh was typing away at a report for UNIT while Owen and Gwen were out buying lunch. They had started sharing out the tasks more evenly lately and to Owen's annoyance had even started using the driving rota. As they had walked out of the HUB the medic had been grumbling to himself while Gwen described how she was going to mess with the mirrors on the SUV. As yet the other organisations had no idea that Jack had disappeared, he often bunked off the scheduled meetings with outside agencies and as long as the paperwork kept being filed, they should be able to keep it to themselves for another few months at least. The last thing that Torchwood Three needed was a UNIT investigation. Ianto might be a good actor but it didn't mean that he was ready to face an enquiry from UNIT asking the whereabouts of their absent leader.<p>

When the proximity alarm sounded to let her know that the SUV was back in the garage Tosh tapped the communicator at her ear and tried to get hold of Ianto. When that failed she texted him and when she got no response she pulled up the CCTV of Ianto's office. The tape showed him entering the office three hours ago but she couldn't see his desk past the bookshelves. There was nothing of interest until forty minutes ago when Ianto had thrown his flowers in the bin then disappeared behind the shelves again. She was about to close the window when the screen lit up with a soft orange glow, Ianto was still out of the shot but there was obviously something going on.

Owen had left Gwen in the garage putting the seat back into its correct position and walked ahead of her into the HUB carrying the food.

"Tosh, I come bearing…" he stopped and stared when he saw her come running out of the weapons locker holding a rather large machine gun, seeing such a small woman holding such a big gun was undeniably sexy but he was still confused as to why she needed it in the HUB.

"There's something in the archives" That was all Owen needed to snap into action, dropping the plastic bag of food on the floor he pulled a handgun out of his waistband, cocked it and followed Tosh through the labyrinthine archives until they reached Ianto's office

"So what are we looking for?"

"I don't know"

Owen looked at her, confused "You're running armed into the Tea boy's lair and you don't even know what the problem is? He'll kill you if you put a bullet in his precious paperwork"

"Something glowy, and orange" Tosh hated not having any more information "The camera was blocked"

"Fine, we go in on three" Tosh nodded

"One" Owen moved in front of Tosh to take point

"Two" Tosh offered a silent prayer to whoever was listening that her friend was okay

"Three" Owen burst into the office, he cleared the area closest to the door then froze, gun pointed in front of him when he was facing the couch. His sudden stop caused Tosh to walk into his back.

"Hey!" She was confused until she too saw what Owen had seen.

Ianto woke up to find two guns pointed at him.

"Okay who the hell are you and where's Ianto?" Owen didn't like this situation, there should be no way that an intruder could get into the HUB without setting off twenty different alarms. On the couch, in nothing but a dress shirt was a woman who was distractingly hot. If she thought that her physical appearance was going to sway him she was mistaken, even if she was even more distracting when a cute, confused look crossed her features.

"Owen?" a second after she spoke she put a hand to her throat seeming surprised by her own voice, screamed and stared at her hands then she passed out.

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later in the medical bay Ianto Jones regained consciousness, his first thought was that the aching he had been feeling had been caused by the flu like he suspected and that Owen must have brought him for treatment but when he looked down at himself he remembered the situation he could scarcely believe he was in. Only in Torchwood could you go to sleep for an hour and wake up tied to an autopsy table with your friends pointing guns at you. Thankfully this time he woke up it was Tosh standing over him, not Owen. He couldn't turn to see where Owen was but could hear him working on the other side of the autopsy bay.<p>

"Identify yourself" Tosh had never looked so intimidating, her usual office wear accessorised with that ridiculously large gun.

Ianto grimaced at how _wrong_ his voice sounded but did manage an answer "Ianto Jones. Please Tosh, what's going on?" Tosh looked to Owen, who projected the results of his analysis onto the wall.

"She…he's telling the truth Tosh" Owen moved to undo the wrist and ankle restraints holding Ianto to the cold table. Then he moved to stand in front of Ianto and stopped him as he made to get down from the table. "Look at yourself and have a think about whether or not you're ready to get down."

Ianto looked down, he saw the long pale legs dangling over the edge of the autopsy table, he saw the soft hands which he stared at for a good five minutes before moving them to touch the features of his altered face, then he realised that there were other, more dramatic changes, his hands went to his chest and Tosh stepped in to stop him before he went any further. Now she had abandoned the rifle she looked less scary and more like the comforting best friend he needed.

"Whose body am I in Tosh? She looked at him like you look at a child who just asked you where babies come from. Owen came to her rescue.

"Yours"

"But I'm a girl"

"Actually, you're a woman." Owen stood next to the tiled wall and pointed to the results of his DNA test.

"This is the sample I took during your last physical" He indicated the top pattern "and this" he pointed to the one underneath "is the one I took while you were passed out"

"They're the same"

Tosh pulled herself up onto the autopsy table to sit next to him and squeezed his hand

"Not quite, this sample is about as similar as I'd expect from a sister. They're definitely similar but there are some differences" he pointed to one piece of the pattern "Like this, in one you've got and XY chromosome pairing and in the other you've got XX"

"I don't understand"

The medic sighed and ran a hand through his hair "you haven't just been put into a woman's body. Your own body has been changed at the most basic level into that of a woman"

"Oh God." They were quiet for a few minutes until Ianto looked down again and noticed his state of undress. The white shirt he ironed this morning now hung loosely to his mid thigh and the sleeves were far too long "I need clothes"

* * *

><p>Though the team had been closer recently they had never worked as efficiently as they had in their current crisis. Owen was going over the results of his scans trying to see if this change could be damaging to Ianto's health. Tosh had found some kind of electronic signal in one of the blood samples and was trying to get a better look at the technology to see if it was responsible for Ianto's sudden transformation. Gwen sat in the conference room with a bewildered Ianto; they were creating a timeline of his last week to see when he could have come into contact with anything that could be responsible for his current condition.<p>

"Okay so nothing interesting happened on Monday or Tuesday," she pushed the notes they had made so far to the other side f the table "Tell me about Wednesday"

"It was raining"

"Sweetie it's Cardiff, if the rain turned you into a woman I think we'd know by now"

Ianto just rolled his eyes and carried on with the details of Wednesday morning until Gwen stopped him.

"Wait what was that?"

"I opened up the tourist office and Sven was waiting outside for me, he came in, dried off, bought a map and left."

"Sven?"

"Blonde guy, come on Gwen you've been gossiping about this since yesterday"

"No I've been gossiping about you meeting some stranger in a bar, if he was here in the morning then he could be following you." Ianto went pale…well paler than he already was. Gwen was on the comms calling the other s upstairs when Ianto remembered something else from that morning

"He knew my name."

"What?" Ianto had been silent as Owen and Tosh entered the room, looking as white as the white scrubs Owen had found for him to wear and staring into space, scared at the thought that someone had done this to him on purpose.

"I let him into the office and he said _Hi Ianto_, he knew my name."

* * *

><p><strong>AN ooh, so Sven is a baddy is he? Who else saw that coming?**

**Turning Ianto into a woman is a request from one of my bestest girls who is a diabolical plot genius. I know it's a little confusing, but I did leave a few hints for the more obsessive whovians(Orange glow…tiny machines…changes [if that's not enough then I recommend re-watching DW/The Doctor Dances])**

**Thank you to everyone who has been reading from the very beginning and I hope you'll all come back on Monday when we get a bit more information on this…and Ianto goes bra shopping (you know that's going to be hilarious)**


	3. A Change Of Image

**Chapter 3: A Change of Image**

* * *

><p>Bloody Torchwood! Ianto Jones had taken a nap this afternoon and woken up to find that he had been turned into a woman and had his friends pointing guns in his face. As if that wasn't bad enough he couldn't even control this new body of his: After an hour of sitting on a cold autopsy table in nothing but an ill fitting shirt Owen had finally allowed Ianto to get up only to laugh at him when he fell flat on his face. It seemed that whatever had changed him had made him a few inches shorter and hadn't informed his brain, Gwen practically had to carry him up to the boardroom so that she could make notes on the last few days of his life because when he tried to climb the stair on his own he stumbled on every step.<p>

For this reason he was now sat on the floor of the gym in the white scrubs which Owen had found for him, taking a break after the three hours of physio he had just endured under the medic's direction but feeling much better now he had his coordination back. Laying back on the mats he pulled his legs up straight in the air then rolled over his shoulder and into a kneeling position. The things this body could do astounded him, he was incredibly flexible and for the first time since he had dislocated it in the battle at canary wharf he was able to rotate his left shoulder fully without it twinging.

A look of mischief passed over his features and once he had looked around to make sure that Owen had gone into the locker room and was out of earshot he jumped up and stood in the middle of the gymnastic equipment. The question was what to try first? If he was going to be stuck like this until Tosh was able to figure out those little machines and reverse their effects then he should at least figure out what else he was capable of in this form. He decided on the beam, as that was the piece of equipment he was the most familiar with. He took a few minutes to walk along the length of the beam and back, making sure that he wasn't going to lose his balance, then went through the same routine he had done that morning but marvelling at how different it felt. Tosh would probably shout at him for it later but right now he was like a child at Christmas, high on excitement and having too much fun to realise that he could still injure himself.

"Oi, stop showing off and get down before you break your neck" Ianto hadn't heard Owen walk in, he was stood in the doorway, his hair damp from his shower and dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a t shirt. Ianto pulled a face but jumped down without argument.

Ianto prepared himself for a lecture on gym safety from Owen – honestly, just because the medic had lost his balance on the beam and managed to land right on his...well it hurt. Thankfully as Owen walked towards Ianto with a look that your dad gave you when you were in trouble Tosh's voice came over the comms.

"Guys I need you upstairs please, I think I've got this figured out"

* * *

><p>At midnight: an hour after she had called them up to the boardroom, Tosh had finally finished explaining what had caused Ianto's transformation. Ianto paled at her the description of the "nano-bots" as she called them, Tiny machines which had for some reason altered his body, she had located a signal from the blood sample Owen took this afternoon and went from there.<p>

"I'm sorry Ianto, I don't know how to reverse it yet but they're machines so they can be reprogrammed." Ianto looked up at her hopefully and she smiled at his confidence in her.

"For now all I can do is deactivate them, that should stop them from making any more changes until I can reverse their effects."

Around the boardroom table the team looked at each other and shared smiles, their latest crisis was far from over but there was light at the end of the tunnel. Ianto couldn't contain himself and practically threw himself into a hug with Tosh which surprised her a little, the friend who usually towered over her was now only an inch or two taller.

"Can you do it now?"

"What?"

"Deactivate them, I can't sleep if I'm going to wake up different again" Ianto was a little embarrassed by his fear. Could another transformation really be any worse than this?

"One second" Tosh picked up her PDA and tapped at it for a minute. "There, if they receive that signal then they should become dormant."

Ianto grinned at his friend and hugged her again, then yawned "Thanks Tosh" He turned around to face everyone "Thanks all of you, I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to deal with this on my own"

"I am _too _tired to deal with you if you're going to get sappy Jones" Owen was leaning back in his chair to look at the ceiling "Now I think it might be a good idea to get some kip before the world decides to end or Gwen grows a beard or something."

"Oi" Gwen threw her pen at Owen who ducked under the table just in time.

"Tea boy, you and me are staying here, not that I don't trust Tosh but if something goes wrong with those little robots I want to be close enough to my equipment"

"Fine" Owen had his doctor face on so there was no point in arguing "But if you try to climb into bed with me again I will set Myfanwy on you"

"That was _one _time, and I was drunk and..."he looked confused "where is there a bed in this place? I was planing on the couch and..." then it clicked "Jack's"

Tosh looked concerned, they didn't mention Jack, Ianto tended to get eerily quiet when they did so it had become an unwritten rule that the team never mentioned their absent leader. "Are you sure? You haven't been in there since..."

"It's fine, I've slept there enough times before"

The team didn't quite believe that Ianto was fine but accepted that they weren't going to win the argument and watched as he made his way through Jack's office and listened as he climbed down the metal ladder to the bedroom below. Owen settled himself on the uncomfortable sofa with some blankets, Gwen went home to Rhys, hoping that he wouldn't get on her case abut being so late. She couldn't deal with an argument tonight. And Tosh couldn't sleep, instead she sat down at her desk and carried on working with the nano bots, trying to figure out how to reprogram something subatomic, something she couldn't even conceive of. Blocking their signals had been one thing but she had a lot of work to do until she could reverse what they had done to Ianto. From the bottom drawer of her desk she pulled out a box of tools she never used unless she absolutely had to, her sonic tools, built in secret from what she could remember of the plans she saw years ago. Nobody honestly thought that they were getting much sleep tonight.

* * *

><p>Ianto stood at the base of the ladder for ten minutes before he gathered the courage to move into the room. Though he had spent so much time in here he had never entered this room alone, it seemed so much bigger and colder without Jack. He went over to the bed and smiled at the crumpled sheets; Jack never did make the bed. Exhausted and safe in the knowledge that he would not wake up changed again Ianto lay down on the bed that still smelled of Jack. Nobody had been down here in a month, it was just as Jack left it, Ianto almost felt that at any moment Jack would come walking out of the bathroom with a dirty joke about toothpaste. This was too much, for the first time since Jack had left Ianto Jones wept. The stress of the day added to the feeling of being completely alone had him curled into the covers of Jack's bed holding onto a cold pillow which smelt like him. It was a poor substitute but here in the place where he always felt safe he was able to drift off into a dreamless sleep.<p>

He was woken at 7am by his phone buzzing on the night stand, he didn't recognise the number so ignored it but three minutes later he was woken from the half sleep he had drifted into by a text message telling him that he had a new voice mail. The voice on the other end of the phone snapped Ianto back into full consciousness, made him remember exactly what had happened to him and had him running scared right up the ladder and over to a sleeping Owen on the couch. Ianto poked his colleague in the arm but got no response, Ianto shook his shoulder but he didn't move. Sighing he sat down on Owen's legs and slapped him in the face. Owen was still half asleep but conscious enough to pull a gun from under the blanket and point it at Ianto.

"Hey, I was just waking you up! Don't shoot me!"

Owen groaned then raised a hand to his cheek, lowering the gun "You hit me?"

"You wouldn't wake up"

"It's stupid o'clock in the fucking morning why do I want to be awake?

"I got a phone call"

"and I care because"

"It was from Sven."

* * *

><p>The team of Torchwood three sat around the boardroom table. At the head of the table Ianto, who had already heard the message was holding himself, as if his slim female arms were the only thing holding him together. He didn't exactly fill the team with confidence. Next to him was Toshiko, she hadn't slept last night but despite her hard work was no closer to understanding the technology responsible for turning Ianto into a woman. She cradled her third cup of coffee and longed to go downstairs and change into a fresh pair of clothes. Owen was fidgeting in his chair, he hadn't slept very well on the forty year old couch in the common area and now had a kink in his back that he was trying to work out. Gwen was as usual the last one to arrive, but nobody dared question her tardiness as it looked like she had been crying. Ianto hoped that he hadn't caused an argument between her and Rhys by making her late home again.<p>

"Right" Gwen took up her position as leader, standing behind Ianto's chair

_Ianto It's me, You didn't go home last night and I just want to make sure you're okay. The change can be a bit of a shock for humans. I know you're probably scared but that's why I need to see you. You don't need to be afraid. You don't need to worry about anything any more, I'm going to look after you. I love you. See you soon._

"end of messages"

The team was stunned, Gwen put her hand on Ianto's shoulder and he covered it with his own, needing something to feel safe.

"That was..." Owen found his voice

"Creepy"

Ianto scowled up at Gwen, the look didn't suit his new delicate face. "It's not you he's stalking, it's not you he says he's in love with. I think this goes way beyond creepy" Gwen looked down at her colleague apologetically, she hadn't thought of how Ianto must feel, being targeted by someone: stalked and altered. There was nothing she could say to make him feel better so she decided to let her actions do the talking.

"Right, whoever this Sven bastard is I want him found. Tosh we have his phone number I want you to get to work on tracing it, once you've got a location you take Owen and bring the bugger in."Ianto looked up at Gwen with a frail smile, she had really come into her own as the team's leader: she was the most emotional member of the team but when the need arose she just switched it off. Torchwood didn't need it's heart today, it needed a leader. Gwen coordinated the team, keeping Ianto busy with a pile of paperwork she accidentally dropped over the railings as she made her way along the metal walkway connecting the boardroom to the stairs. Ianto spent an hour picking up, drying out and sorting paperwork while Tosh and Owen went to to pick up Sven and Gwen spoke to them over the comms, swearing a lot like she always seemed to do when she was in charge

* * *

><p>Tosh had very little information to work with, according to her facial recognition program and a photo from ClubX's CCTV camera there was no such man in existence, which was ridiculous, she had images from every social networking site, passport agency, driving licence and arrest. Sven was a technological ghost, according to the computer he didn't exist. Other than his obsession with Ianto they knew nothing about him so once she had a trace on his location they would be going in blind. Tosh didn't like that, those were the times when people got shot, and without Jack and his hundred years experience with shooting things it happened more and more often. Still when her PDA beeped, displaying the location of the phone Sven had called from she pushed away her fear and picked up a gun at the weapons locker and shouted to Owen who met her at the Cog door. They were bringing Ianto's stalker in no matter what, nobody got away with messing with one of their own.<p>

The man Tosh and Ianto brought back was unlike anybody they had brought in before: usually humans gazed about the HUB at the strange equipment found there and at Myfanwy if she was flying around the HUB and aliens fought them, struggling at their handcuffs as they knew Torchwood's reputation as the captors and murderers of anything alien. Sven didn't do either, they had found him sat on a park bench waiting for Ianto to call him. He had fought them at first, demanding to know where Ianto was and punching Owen in the face as the medic tried to put on the handcuffs. If it wasn't so important that they get him to cooperate for Ianto's sake then Tosh would have gladly shot him, as it was all they could do was bundle him into the back of the SUV and keep him quiet by telling him that if he cooperates that he'll get to see Ianto. There was no way they were letting Sven anywhere near their friend but it seemed to calm their prisoner down.

Ianto wasn't aware that Tosh and Owen had found Sven until they were five minutes away from the HUB. He didn't want Sven to see him so he let Gwen know that he'd be in the tourist office, Tosh and Owen would be bringing Sven in through the lower levels from the garage so he was safe in the office for now. Behind his familiar desk he breathed a sigh of relief, then just a sigh as he took in the mess. Owen was never working up here again. The place was a tip, there were leaflets out of their piles, crisp packets behind the counter and pornographic blu-tack statues on top of the computer monitor. He had just got the office clean when a customer walked in, Ianto's eyes widened with shock when he saw his sister in the doorway.

"You alright love, you look like you've seen a ghost" Rhiannon had never seen the pale woman who looked like she had stepped off the set of Grey's Anatomy with that hair and the white scrubs before, she was surprised that her brother hadn't mentioned her though, the boy had to be crazy to be single with this woman in the office everyday – even if her fashion sense was a little eccentric.

"I...erm" Ianto didn't know what to do. What if Rhiannon recognised him? It wasn't likely but he could really do without this extra stress today.

"Is Ianto in, I went by his house but he wasn't in so I thought I'd check here."

"He's ...away" Rhiannon looked surprised, they had been a lot closer lately and she was sure that he'd tell her before he disappeared off again "He was needed in London for a few days, had to leave last night, he shouldn't be more than a few days"

"Oh, well if you hear from him then you get him to call me okay" She smiled and turned to leave, alone in the office again Ianto slumped into his chair and let out a breath he didn't know that he was holding. His calm lasted about thirty seconds before the false wall slid back and Gwen strode out of the secret corridor.

"Was that your sister?" Ianto nodded mutely "We need you downstairs, he says he won't talk to anyone but you"

"I" Ianto didn't particularly want to face the man who had violated and changed him but he also knew that as brilliant as Tosh was she didn't understand the technology needed to change him back. If he was ever going to get back to normal then he needed Sven's help.

They made their way back though the HUB to the interrogation room which hadn't been used since Suzie came back to life, Ianto walked reluctantly down the metal staircase while his team watched from the observation platform hidden by mirrored glass. Sven sat handcuffed to the table and the team watched as Ianto took a seat opposite him, they didn't say anything but after a minute of silence Ianto jumped up shouting "Stop it"

"Ianto?" Gwen's voice came over the comms

Ianto waved his hand to signal that he was fine and turned back to Sven. "I've agreed to talk to you but stay out of my head. Minds are supposed to be private and I don't want you digging around in there"

"But your mind is why I chose you. I watched this city but couldn't find a single person that interested me until I felt your pain. It sang to me of your loss, the man who came and went from life as we enter and exit a room, he left so many times but you felt it every time. I didn't understand it but I needed to find you. It couldn't be anyone else"

Behind the glass screen Tosh covered her mouth in shock, had Sven really been watching Ianto for months? Ianto was facing away from her but she could see from the set of his shoulders that he was barely controlling the anger that hid under his stoic exterior. As Sven continued, answering the Welshman's questions about why he had to change him into a woman Owen started to mirror Ianto's behaviour. Sven had come to this world to look for a bride but had instead fallen in love with Ianto, or at least he thought he was in love with the first mind he had sensed after his ship crash landed in the bay nine weeks ago. When he realised that the bride he had chosen was a male he had to adapt his peoples technology so that he and Ianto would be able to return to his planet and produce the heirs his culture required of him.

"And what if I don't want to be your space concubine?"

Sven frowned, he hadn't expected that "You...But...the change, you haven't completed the change." Sven actually looked afraid now, far from the compliant bride he had wanted he now had an angry Welshman who felt violated by his technology on his hands.

"Really because look at me" Ianto indicated the soft curves of his altered body "I'd say that was complete wouldn't you"

"The change isn't just physical. With off world brides it is necessary to make some alterations to their minds also, they forget their own planet's customs and absorb mine. It makes integration into our society easier and means that the children won't be contaminated with human ideals"

Ianto turned to face the window and Tosh smiled, in halting the nano-bots progress she had saved Ianto's mind from being altered, and by the sound of it had spared him from becoming a mother against his will as well. Even if she had failed in changing him back, she had spared him that.

* * *

><p>Sven hadn't been much more help after that. He refused to help them to restore Ianto to his proper appearance and wouldn't speak to Tosh about the technology because she had halted the change. Sven was moved down to the cells. From a piece of tech Tosh had found in Sven's jacket pocket when she searched him she ran a scan for nearby ships and located Sven's in Splott. It seemed that he has transported it there from the bay and made his repairs, they moved it to the garage before UNIT could pick it up and claim it as their own. By 2100 Tosh had a good idea of how the ship worked but still didn't know how to reprogram the nanobots, they seemed to be totally unrelated technologies and she was still no closer to understanding them. At 11pm she gave up and drove home, for once in her life feeling totally defeated by a piece of technology, Ianto had thanked her for her hard work but as she fell into a restless sleep at home she dreamed of what would happen to Ianto if she couldn't figure out how to change him back.<p>

* * *

><p>Of all the dangerous situations Ianto Jones had found himself in since joining Torchwood none of them had scared him as much as what he was currently facing. Stood in the entrance of the Cardiff branch of Next he found himself taking an involuntary step back to get a away from the hundreds of bargain crazed women pushing and shoving each other trying to get the best of the sale items. Holding his hand and pulling him deeper into the riot of customers was Gwen cooper, she was on a mission to get him some clothes that fit, being sick of seeing him in the white scrubs he borrowed from the HUB every time he needed a new outfit.<p>

"What about this one" She held up a red sun dress only to have it met by a glare. Pouting she put the dress back on the rack and started looking at the next rail. Ianto was even less fun to shop with than Rhys, and so far all he had in his basket was four pairs of smart black trousers for work and a dozen fitted shirts in various different colours. She had almost asked why he needed so many shirts until she remembered that it was Ianto who took responsibility for clean-up of alien goop and she had seen too many of his suits fall victim to the slime.

"Okay, so you still need pyjamas and clothes for home"

Ianto groaned but dutifully followed her up the escalator to the next floor which according to the map on the wall offered pyjamas and shoes.

"There's one thing I've never understood, why is there an entire floor devoted to women's shoes when the men's clothes get crammed into the basement?" Ianto was stood on the step above her with the basket resting on the escalator at his feet.

"Would you walk around three floors of clothes to find what you want? If you're anything like Rhys then you go into a shop already knowing what you want"

"exactly"

"Right, well for most women that's not how we shop, you walk around the shop until you see something that you like, you can even find things that you didn't know you needed"

Ianto stepped off the escalator ahead of her and paled at the endless rails of pyjama choices he was faced with. Gwen Just laughed and pulled him over to the first block

"You sound like Jack, I sent him out for milk once and he came back with a puppy"

"He didn't!"

Ianto laughed along with Gwen as he explained, he had sent Jack out for a pint of milk because the man had drunk all the milk in the fridge then put an empty carton back in the door, Ianto had sent him out to buy more and an hour later he had come back with a westie puppy and no milk. There was apparently a pet shop Ianto had never seen a few streets away and Jack decided that Ianto needed a dog. He had tried to convince Ianto to keep the creature, probably traumatising the poor dog in the process with his methods but Ianto had not given in and puppy the puppy now lived at his sister's house.

"He called it puppy?"

"No he called him petunia , Mica calls him puppy"

"Him?"

"Yep, male dog, I almost went to check if Janet was a boy too"

Gwen laughed so hard that she knocked half a dozen pairs of red pyjama shorts with "Baywatch" on the back off the shelf. Ianto picked up a pair and put them into his basket along with the matching T-shirt. Gwen raised her eyebrows at his choice but was just happy he had chosen something less boring than the rest of the clothes. He seemed to relax after that, even if the smiles he gave her didn't quite reach his sad blue eyes. By the time they reached the tills Ianto's basket was full; he had enough work clothes to last him a month if there weren't too many exploding goop aliens, three pairs of jeans, a loose fitting boyfriend cut pair that Ianto had chosen, a pair of dark boot-cut jeans that would go well with one of the tops she had put in the basket earlier and a pair of black skinny jeans that Gwen had insisted on even though Ianto was sure that he'd never wear them. On top of that he had four pairs of short pyjamas and one pair of long pyjama bottoms, a few T-shirts to wear with his jeans, some trainers, flat pumps and a pair of boots with a heel that Ianto felt certain he'd never be able to walk in. The cashier was only too happy to help the customers spending over £600 at her till and dutifully left out a pair of jeans, a shirt and trainers for the strange woman in white scrubs to change into.

Half an hour later and completely exhausted Ianto sat in a booth at the back of Costa coffee surrounded by shopping bags as Gwen went to buy their lunch. He hadn't liked Gwen at first, she had arrived too soon after Suzie's death for him not to resent her a little for replacing his friend, and later her constant flirtations with Jack had annoyed him but Gwen had been good to him. After Jack had left Ianto had been running himself ragged trying to get a distraction from the pain he was feeling and Gwen had looked after him, she had made sure that he ate with the rest of the team so she knew that he'd taken a break then had driven him the half mile home at night so she was certain that even if he didn't sleep he at least left the HUB. Then she had encouraged his project of creating the gym but had still kept an eye on him and after he had been turned into a woman and she found him still working in the archives at six in the morning she had taken him home for dinner that night. Her reports of Rhys' lasagne making skills had not been exaggerated and The Welshman was only to happy to welcome a beautiful woman who ate more than he did and was happy to talk about Rugby League with him into his home. At Rhys' insistence Ianto had become a regular fixture at their kitchen table, though while he was in Gwen's flat he was known as Yan, Rhys never asked him what his full name was so he never had to come up with a lie for the Welshman's benefit.

They finished lunch and while Ianto had no idea what else he could possibly need he found himself being led along the high-street, thankfully not weighed down by the shopping from Next as they had dumped it in Gwen's car for now. He was dragged through shops he had never even noticed before and after an hour of buying things he didn't think he'd ever want or need he'd gone into a hair salon against Gwen's protests. She may like his hair as it was, tumbling down his back in dark waves but to Ianto it was a nuisance, as soon as the wind picked up it was in his face and he spent forty minutes stood in front of the mirror with a hair-dryer each morning because it was so thick. The stylist was reluctant to follow the young woman's order to chop it all off, customers looking for such a drastic change were usually in the middle of a messy breakup but this one just seemed to be sick of her hair. Gwen watched with wide eyes as over a foot of hair was chopped off and the remaining locks were styled and trimmed to perfection. When Ianto finally turned around to show her the end result she was surprised to find that she liked it. Maybe it was the nano bots and their skill at genetic manipulation but with Ianto's bone structure he could pull off the short spiky style where most women could not. Satisfied with his new look Ianto had looked at the amount of hair left on the floor and smiled, the salon was expensive but he had still left the stylist a generous tip and she went for a hard earned break smiling.

Gwen had informed him that they had one more stop to make and they made their way off the high street and into a shopping centre. They were half way up the escalator when he spotted his sister, nephew and niece coming towards them on an escalator going down, Ianto tensed and span around so fast that he almost fell.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"My sister is _right _there" He knew there was no way that she would recognise him but being that close to his family and not being able to talk to them was fairly unsettling. As he got off the escalator and followed Gwen towards the shops on this floor he saw David staring at him from the bottom of the escalator, Ianto tried to shake of the feeling that David had recognised him and followed Gwen who had just gone inside the first shop on this side of the building.

"No!" Gwen listened to Ianto complain from inside the dressing room "I am not wearing this it's completely ridiculous. She had saved this shop for last because she had known that it would be the one to try Ianto's patience. As far as she could gather for as long as Ianto had been living as a woman he had been wearing nothing underneath the scrubs he had lived in. Now that he had everything else he needed a trip to La Senza was most definitely required. He had been measured and informed of his size and was now blushing like crazy and refusing to pick anything. The mannequins scattered around the shop wore brightly coloured underwear but after Ianto had refused to try on anything she showed him Gwen had asked the shop girl to point out something little simpler. In the end Ianto ended up with eight sets of "boy pants" type bottoms and coordinating bras along with another set of pyjamas. Gwen had been the one carrying the basket in this shop and without Ianto's knowledge had snuck in some more adventurous sets in red, cream and black lace.

Gwen had dropped Ianto off at his flat with an evil grin on her face, she had been picking up extra items all day which she knew would get a reaction out of Ianto so as she drove home she waited for the text message promising decaf and pain. Ianto may say that he didn't want dresses...or lace underwear...or heels but she was happy to wait and see how long it took before they made an appearance in his everyday clothing. She had just unlocked the door of her flat when her phone buzzed and a message lit up her screen

_You are evil Gwen Cooper! Not only are you on decaf but Janet is getting all of your favourite biscuits tomorrow!_


	4. Revelations

**Chapter 4: Revelations**

* * *

><p>Ianto didn't know what he was doing. Stood in the locker room dressed in the black skinny jeans he had sworn he'd never wear, the black leather boots with a heel and a pointed toe and the red fitted shirt he had worn to work he was beginning to wish that he hadn't agreed to go out with Tosh tonight. He hadn't been happy with how he looked for weeks and while he was more comfortable at work now he had his professional clothing to hide behind at home he still stuck to the loose fitting jeans and t-shirts he had picked out himself, ignoring Gwen's more adventurous clothing selections. He had tried them on but they didn't look right, nothing looked right on him any more which the smashed mirror in his bathroom was a testament to. He'd woken up a week ago and had half forgotten that he wasn't himself only to be faced with an image of a stranger in tiny red shorts and a vest top in the mirror as he entered the bathroom. Smashing the glass didn't get rid of the feeling that he wasn't right but it let him forget for a minute, he hadn't gone to work that day. He'd called in sick and gone back to bed hoping that if he hid under the covers for long enough then the world would right itself and the last eight weeks will have all been a bad dream.<p>

"Ianto?" Tosh had finished changing into the clothes she wanted to go out in. She dabbed a little colour onto her lips, fluffed her hair and was ready to go. As always Ianto refused her offer to lend him some cosmetics, he'd deal with the shoes and the clothes but no matter how unhappy he was with how he looked he wasn't going to use make up, Owen would have a field day. They headed out and started going from bar to bar, Studiously avoiding Charles street and Ianto's bad memories of the club there, even with Sven locked up under the HUB he wasn't ready to go back there yet. All of the problems he had been faced with in the last three weeks hardly seemed worth the cheap one night stand he had gone searching for that night.

In an overpriced bar on the bay a group of businessmen in suits looking suave sent some drinks to the pair of women sat at the bar. Tosh accepted them with a wave and they went to sit with the group for a while. The drink took the edge off Ianto's nerves but when one of the men leaned in to say something into Ianto's ear he found himself nursing what felt like a broken arm and looking at the deceptively strong woman with his vision unfocussed by pain and alcohol. Tosh led Ianto out of the club before security asked them to leave and they walked the half mile back to Ianto's flat. They were inside and in their pyjamas before either of them spoke.

"So what are we watching?" Ianto had just come out of the bathroom where he was brushing his teeth to find Tosh in bed setting up the DVD player , she held up the case for legally blonde and patted the space next to her. They settled into the warm bed, honestly having a better time here than they had been having in town. Ianto looked down at his pyjama clad body and sat cross legged on the bed with his knees covered with the duvet, mirroring Tosh's position next to him. They passed the next few hours watching the film and around 0100 Tosh noticed that her friend had fallen asleep next to her. She turned off the TV and put the DVD back in it's case then sat back down on the bed and looked at Ianto's sleeping form, when it was obvious that he wasn't waking up any time soon she made her way silently out of the room.

Ianto had been insistent that they slept in the spare room tonight even though every time she had stayed before they had slept in Ianto's bed, it was bigger and the en suite bathroom had a double sink so they didn't bother each other while brushing their teeth in the morning. At first glance there was nothing wrong with Ianto's bedroom and she was no closer to understanding why he didn't want to stay there but then she saw the hundreds of photographs scattered across the bed, they were of Ianto with countless different people spanning his entire life, from pictures of him and his sister at Christmas when they were children to photos of him at university and pictures of him and Lisa from then they were together. She had no idea why Ianto suddenly felt the need to look through photographs, he hated looking through them usually, they were reminders of the people he had lost and left behind because of work and he refused to keep photo albums. Tosh took a step backwards in the dark bedroom and winced as she stood on something sharp, groping for the light pull she made her way into the bathroom and hopped over to sit on the edge of the bath and pull whatever it was out of her foot. She pulled out the shard of glass and was confused as to why it was on Ianto's bathroom floor until she looked up and saw the shattered mirror above the sink. The damage seemed to be focussed around two points and there was blood on the glass in these places. Then it made sense, when Ianto had pulled Owen aside on Monday and the men had disappeared down to the med bay for a few minutes she had been confused to see and Ianto come back upstairs with a dressing across his knuckles. Now Tosh knew that he had injured himself by punching his mirror but she had no idea why he would do something like that. Knowing that she wouldn't get any answers till Ianto woke up in the morning Tosh walked carefully across the bathroom floor to avoid standing on any more glass and went back to bed.

* * *

><p>When he woke up on Saturday morning Ianto found a concerned looking Toshiko holding his hand and looking at his knuckles, he realised that she must have been in the other bathroom and tried to think of a reason he could give her for why he did it. It wasn't like he could tell her that he hated this body so much that the pain he felt breaking the mirror was worth it to destroy image of the person he saw there. But Tosh wasn't the kind of person to confront him and demand an explanation, she just helped him to clean up the glass he'd been putting off picking up for days and while he made breakfast she had put the photographs which were scattered around his bedroom back into the large cardboard box they lived in. he had got the photos out days ago but had been unable to pack them back up again, seeing a thousand images of himself looking like he should and having the time of his life just reminded him of the situation he was in and sacrificing an entire room of his flat had been easier than going through that twice in a week.<p>

Ianto made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast and they ate at the table in their pyjamas. Tosh finished first and sat back in her chair with one knee up against her chest as she studied her best friend. Ianto seemed to pick at his food more than eat it lately and this morning he had eaten even less than usual.

"Everything okay?" He looked a bit pale and didn't look very comfortable. He hadn't respond to her question and had a hand on his stomach

"Ianto?" she walked around the table and put a hand on his forehead, he didn't have a temperature and as soon as she made contact with his skin his head snapped up.

"Sorry Tosh, Spaced out for a minute there"

"Are you okay?"

"It's nothing, just a bit of a stomach ache"

"Hmm"

* * *

><p>Ianto hated it when Toshiko hmm'd it usually meant that she wasn't going to let something go and he was right, within five minutes of Owen arriving at the HUB Ianto was dragged down to the med bay and had just been ordered to get his kit off despite the fact that he told them he was fine. Still, being a doctor and a nosy git Owen wanted to see what the problem was. When the rift alarm went off Ianto thought that he'd never been so happy to hear about a potential alien threat in his life.<p>

"Hey, saved by the bell" Ianto jumped down from the autopsy table and took the stairs back to the main level of the HUB two at a time, glad that he hadn't given in and got undressed when Owen ordered him to because it would have only slowed him down.

"This isn't over Jones, as soon as we get back I want you back down there so I can see what's up. Honestly if you're going to bitch why bother coming to me in the first place"

"When did I come to you? You fucking dragged me down there because you're a perv and a..."

"Guys!" Gwen interrupted the men before they could get into a serious argument and the team armed themselves and set off in the SUV to the coordinates of the rift spike.

Owen screeched the SUV to a halt outside a warehouse on the docks, the medic was constantly making handbrake turns and wearing down the brake pads to make a more dramatic entrance. Ianto and Tosh covered the back of the warehouse while Owen and Gwen took the front. There had been small rift spikes in this area for about a week culminating in the large spike which had brought them here today but other than the fact that _something_ came through they were going in blind, they could be facing anything from a dangerous group of aliens to an extra terrestrial toaster.

Ianto's first impression of the inside of the warehouse was that it looked like any other squat. There were burned out fires and lawn furniture scattered about but there were some atypical items as well, Tosh stooped to examine what looked like an alien computer and a large pile of technology when they were fired upon by some kind of energy weapon. Staying down so that they had cover behind the machinery they listened as a minute later they heard six shots ring out before Owen yelled to them from his position about 100m away. He and Gwen had shot the aliens who by the looks of it had been holding a number of teenagers here. Tosh scanned them then nodded to Owen who, satisfied that the kids were human started bagging the alien corpses to transport them back to the HUB.

"Right" Gwen was coordinating the team as usual "Owen you get those back to the HUB, Tosh I need you to pack up the tech you found over there and me and Ianto are going to interview this lot and retcon them okay?" a chorus of "Okay"came from the rest of the team and they split up to go about their assigned tasks.

Gwen stood in front of the group of teenagers huddled on the warehouse floor and sighed. Usually in a situation like this the aliens had either killed their captives before Torchwood arrived or attempted to use them as hostages or shields once the shooting started. So most of the time Torchwood Three's involvement with human captives of hostile aliens was packing them into body bags, she was happy that this wasn't the case today due to the age of the children in front of her. but it did make the job more difficult, they now had a few hours of interviewing and retconning these witnesses before they could return them to their parents. She decided to talk to the girls while Ianto dealt with the boys and within two hours, they had taken statements from most of the kids, had fed them juice laced with Retcon and sent them home on buses of trains where they would arrive thinking that they'd had a day out in town and nothing more. The last of the girls came to sit next to Gwen, having seen the last girl leave and guessing that it was her turn.

"Hi I'm Gwen What's your name?" Gwen found herself falling back on her police training and wondered how Ianto was doing, he still had four boys to interview so she would go and help him once this girl's report had been logged.

"Jones, Anwen Jones" Her accent was softer than those of the other kids Gwen had spoken to and she sounded like she must have lived in north Wales originally. She seemed nervous and as she sat opposite Gwen she was scratching the back of her hand absently.

"Okay Anwen and what can you tell me about what's been happening here" The girl looked reluctant to tell her and a little scared "You can tell me love. I work with this kind of thing all the time and all I want to do is help you."

The girl explained how she had met a group of people in town after school this week, they seemed cool and one of them was really nice to her. When they brought her back here their faces changed and she got scared but she couldn't get away, in the next two days they brought eleven more teenagers to the warehouse.

"Wait, there were twelve of you?"

"Yes" Anwen didn't know why that was important "four girls and eight boys"

"I've only counted eleven, is there any way that one could have got away" Gwen was now facing the possibility that one of the bodies Owen took back to the HUB could well be a teenage boy.

"No they kept us together in the middle of the room, but there was one boy, they took him away this morning. I don't know where" Anwen didn't know how she could have forgotten about that boy, he was the last to arrive but the person in charge had spent a lot more time with him than with any of the others, She was handed a glass of juice and told to drink it all before she went home. Confused and still slightly stunned Anwen had done as she was told and watched as Gwen made her way around the warehouse with a strange device held out in front of her.

According to her scans there was indeed another person in this warehouse and as far as she could tell it was a human. She made her way around the large building until the beeping on her scanner got faster and faster telling her that she was close. As she got to within ten metres of where the boy was supposed to be she switched the device to silent – as helpful as Tosh's little invention was the beeping got really irritating after a while

"Hello?"

"Help!" the voice came from behind a door, she tried the handle but it was locked

"Stand back" she aimed and fired, the door swung inwards and Gwen was faced with the last teenager she would have expected to get kidnapped by a group of crazy aliens

"No fucking way"

* * *

><p><strong>AN Ooh! Who could it be...actually I think you're all going to guess it anyway but I loves me a cliffhanger. The next chapter is going to be up on Thursday, and there are a few little shocks instore for Ianto**

**Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed, I apologise to anyone I didn't reply to last week but i've been away.**


	5. A Family Reunion

**Chapter 5: A Family Reunion**

* * *

><p>"Ianto you'd better get over here"<p>

"But I'm..."

"Now!"

Ianto got up from the box he had been sat on while interviewing the boys held here by the aliens they had disposed of this afternoon and went to where Gwen had told him to go through her radio. "Gwen if you've called me away from witnesses to kill a bloody spider again then I'm not going to be...Oh" He stopped dead when he saw what Gwen had seen.

"Exactly," the ex-policewoman holstered her gun "why don't I go and deal with the boys while you sort this out"

"Mm hmm" Ianto nodded and she left. Through the door that Gwen had shot open Ianto was faced with one of the things he had prayed he would never had to deal with when he started this job, his nephew David, lying on the floor of a warehouse after being caught up in an alien plot. He had hoped that by keeping his family in the dark about what he did for a living would be enough to protect them but it wasn't enough. Under normal circumstances he would just RETCON the boy and take him home, telling Rhiannon a story about teenage drinking or something to explain the memory loss but that wasn't an option at the moment. In his current condition he needed to detach himself from the protectiveness he was feeling towards the sleeping teen before he woke up then figure out how to deal with this without giving himself away. He checked David's pulse and breathing and other than a cut on the side of his head there didn't appear to be anything wrong with him.

* * *

><p>Owen Harper was elbow deep in the chest of the second warehouse alien when Tosh came walking down the stairs into the med bay.<p>

"Gwen and Ianto are on their way back in"

"Kay" He was a little busy with the creature on the slab – it looked human on the outside but its innards were something to behold, it had a huge heart, three lungs and its blood was blue. At the edge of his thoughts he was vaguely aware that Tosh was still speaking but was engrossed in the heart he had just weighed and was now holding up to look at when a Biro came flying through the air and hit him on the side of the head.

"Ow, do you want me to throw this thing at you?"

"God no" she shuddered "I can smell it from here and it's disgusting" - she was right, the alien blood did smell like cabbage and kept reminding him of his old aunt Minnie.

"Then why are you trying to kill me with a pen"

"You wouldn't listen" She answered, as if throwing stationery was a perfectly normal response to his ignoring her.

"Fine" he put the heart back into its metal dish, removed his gloves and stood in front of his colleague "I'm listening what is the matter"

"David Jones"

"Love that kid, he still owes me a rematch on the … what about him?"

"Gwen found him in the warehouse"

"Is he?"

"They're bringing him in, he's been unconscious since they found him and Ianto is demanding that you take a look at him"

"Right" Back in doctor mode Owen set about putting the alien into a fridge unit to free up the examination table "give me a shout when they're in and I'll meet them in the garage"

* * *

><p>David woke up in a tiled room with high ceilings that for some reason smelled like soup. He heard voices from somewhere overhead and decided to feign sleep for as long as possible to get a better idea of what was going on before he totally freaked out.<p>

"Well I can't very well go down there can I, what if he recognises me. I have a rule that no matter how crazy this job gets Rhi and the kids stay out of it, he can't know that I'm involved with Torchwood"

David knew that name, Torchwood was Cardiff's worst kept secret and there were literally thousands of different conspiracy theories about the mysterious group who sped around the city and closed down whole areas at a moment's notice without so much as a sorry to the people they inconvenienced. What had gone on in the warehouse probably qualified as one of the weird happenings which seemed to attract team Torchwood as well so he really shouldn't be surprised that he had ended up...wherever they had brought him.

"Fine, I'll go . But if he knows me and ends up in counselling for the rest of his life then I'm sending you the bill." There was a mumbled reply followed by the sound of booted feet coming down concrete stairs. He felt a hesitant hand on his shoulder and he did his best impression of a person waking up; stretching and opening his eyes slowly

"You weren't asleep"

"Busted. So this is Torchwood," he looked around at the sunken alcove he was in and took in the old tiles and concrete floor "kind of a let down if I'm honest"

"How did you?"

"Oh, I heard you talking...also it says it in giant letters on the wall over there" From the conference room they heard Owen burst out laughing and Ianto gathered that the team had the CCTV up on the screen. Once had got over the shock of how composed his nephew was despite the situation he had just then in he checked the wound on his head which Owen had cleaned and stitched

"Ow" David complained about it but as Ianto started asking him questions about how he had ended up in the warehouse he kept poking the stitches in his head. That added to David's confession to drinking and skipping school that week to follow around a mysterious blue haired Goth was enough to make Ianto lose the control he was clinging to like a life raft.

"and what if you'd been killed? what am I supposed to tell your mother when you don't come home? She's been calling like mad and it's not like I can answer the...shit" Ianto face palmed when he realised what he'd said.

Another round of laughter came from upstairs and David stood, intending to see who it was, he seemed to be underground which made sense as while Torchwood was famous in the Cardiff area nobody could really tell you where they were housed. Their reputation for involvement with the weird and unexplained was mirrored by their operations centre, computers with five or more screens and strange lights on the consoles were placed around the concrete, tiled and metal constructed base. He looked up at the glass room on the next floor and saw his uncle's colleagues stood around a large dark table. The team had been introduced at Ianto's party as friends working in the same office. If that was a lie and they really worked for Torchwood then where the hell was Ianto, his uncle hadn't been to the house in weeks and while he texted every day he wouldn't answer the phone when they called, something was going on and if being kidnapped by a bunch of goths with ray guns then David was sure that he could push through the residual panic and fear from his two days in the warehouse to get some answers.

"Owen!" he yelled in the direction of the boardroom "Where the hell is my uncle"

* * *

><p>David Jones was magnificent, he stood in front of the Torchwood team, shouting Owen down and staying in complete control of the situation despite Toshiko's attempts to pacify him with excuses of Ianto being away from the office tonight. Ianto had seen him captaining his school rugby team and it seemed that the power and confidence he gained in that position was being used as a way of getting the information he wanted today, The team wee forced to tell him about the rift and the real reason behind the strange going on across Cardiff, Owen showed him photographs of the autopsy of the female alien David had followed to the warehouse and his eyes were opened to the mysteries of space and time as Myfanwy swooped through the HUB waiting to be let out after dark. He took it better than most and once he had taken a moment to adsorb the information he had received he looked at the strange woman in the dark jeans and fitted shirt who was petting the Pterodactyl from a platform near the top of the cavernous building.<p>

"Who are you then?" He asked as he reached the top of the spiralling metal stairs "I've met all of Ianto's work friends before and you weren't there" She hadn't heard him approach and jumped, losing her footing on the small steel walkway and falling over the edge, left clinging to the railing and trying to remain calm.

"Ianto!" Toshiko had been watching the couple and saw her friend fall "Oops"

"What?" David thought he must be hearing wrong as he pulled the woman back over the edge of the platform but as they say on the steel grating that made up the floor things started to fit together: All of the weird and unexplained things in Cardiff were much bigger than the news made them out to be, Torchwood dealt with those things, Ianto worked for Torchwood and for the past few weeks his uncle had been completely impossible to get hold of in person. Now there was a woman sat next to him who was popping her neck in the same way he had seen his uncle do it a million times and had the same look in her eyes in the medical bay earlier that his uncle Ianto had when he broke his arm last year – like he still saw him as the eight year old he left behind when he ran of to university who still needed protecting from the pains of real life.

"oh, my, god. Uncle Ianto?" Now that he looked properly the person sat next to him did look very familiar, the blue eyes staring at him right now were identical to his own, and to his mother and sister and he was pretty certain that if he gave this woman a cup of instant coffee that she would fix him with a glare that could kill a man stone dead at fifty paces. He opened his mouth to speak again but was cut off when he found himself wrapped in a hug by his sobbing mess of an uncle relieved to finally have his family back. Ianto had done a lot of work since he moved back to Cardiff to mend the bridges he burned when he left and didn't so much as write for five years, to lose his family completely because they couldn't know about his _condition_ had been more painful that Rhiannon's hurtful voice mails could ever be.

"Any particular reason for the waterworks?"

"Shut up" Ianto hated that he was being such a girl but now he had started he just couldn't seem to stop crying, he stood and David followed him back to the main level of the HUB so they could talk more.

* * *

><p><strong>AN Whuttt? Did I just tell a member of Ianto's family that he's a she? I've definitely not had enough sleep lately, wrote most of this during the seemingly endless night before my A level results were published so had to completely re-edit it today :( I went to college this morning and I'm happy to say that I'll be starting my degree next month :). There are about 2 more chapters until Jack is back so you know I'll be changing Ianto back soon as well, I've had almost all of my fun with this little plot bunny (but not all, wait for Monday) and it's getting a little tired so it's time I put it to bed.**

**Also, my new fic "The gallifreyan patient" which is a romance for 10th Doctor/The Master lovers is now online and now complete, I hope you'll all check it out. Subs are love and I'll see you all next week x**


	6. A Delicate Issue

**Chapter 8: A Delicate Issue**

* * *

><p><strong>AN This chapter was requested by my Dad of all people, who pointed out what was missing from Ianto's transformation into a woman..love my Dad he's a nutter. Once again there's a bit of naughty language in this one but considering Ianto's situation it's called for.**

* * *

><p>When Rhys Williams was younger he had believed that he wasn't morning person, that was until he moved in with Gwen Cooper, a woman who could not be moved from her bed before 8am if aliens had been attacking Cardiff zoo – and that had happened more than once. It was true, as much as he loved Gwen he had learned pretty quickly that she wasn't the same woman during the hours she so beautifully dubbed "fuck off o'clock". So this morning when there was frantic banging on the front door at 6:27am he wasn't surprised to see a pillow came flying from the other side of the bed as he got up to see who the hell it was. He had barely unlocked the door when he was faced with Gwen's colleague - the one who had just cut all her hair off but still looked like a bloody supermodel - on his doorstep looking ill and upset.<p>

"Oh, come inside my love I'll go see if I can get Gwen out of bed"

Ianto sat uncomfortably on Gwen's sofa and watched as Rhys, dressed in nothing but his black boxers, went back into the bedroom to get Gwen. He hated to barge in so early but with the morning he was having he hadn't known where else to go. He couldn't go to Tosh, she was his best friend and he didn't want her to see him like this. Gwen was a good friend, she even followed a now dressed Rhys out of the bedroom looking sleepy and confused into the living room but she was so different from Tosh, she might actually help him with his current problem without calling Owen (which was the last thing he wanted.) By seven o'clock they had eaten breakfast (cooked by Rhys of course) around the table and Ianto had gone with Gwen into the bedroom so that they could talk.

"Sweet heart what's happened?" they sat on the end of the bed and Gwen put an arm around her troubled friend. Ianto mumbled a response that though she was listening intently she couldn't make out.

"What was that sorry?"

"I need your help with a little problem"

"Okay, always thought you'd go to Tosh in situations like this but yeah I'm always here to help"

"Trust me I've never had this particular problem before and I can't go to Tosh she'd just call Owen"

That had Gwen worried, if Ianto's problem could be something in Owen's department then she really wasn't equipped to help him, she had waited patiently for Ianto to tell her what was wrong.

* * *

><p>At 0858 Gwen and Ianto walked into the HUB together, Toshiko looked up in surprise, Ianto was never this late and for once Gwen was in on time, their arriving together was just as strange and when Ianto went to the kitchen to make the coffee Owen was screaming for she got up to go and ask Gwen what was going on only to see the Welshwoman walking towards her.<p>

"I need to talk to you about Ianto"

"Of course" She indicated Owen's chair and Gwen pulled it over.

"Ianto came to my house this morning, and shall we say that his transformation into a woman is now complete"

"But...I halted the nano genes, there shouldn't have been any more changes"

"Tosh" Gwen stopped her before she could reach for her keyboard "There are changes going on in Ianto's body that have nothing to do with technology, it's all completely natural it's just a bit outside of his area of experience so he was a bit panicked"

Toshiko's brilliant mind digested the information for a moment, Though Sven had specifically mentioned him wanting Ianto as a mate in all of their research she and Owen hadn't even thought of Ianto's transformation as a means to procreate. They had left Ianto totally unprepared for the possibility of it and she supposed that for a man to find out one morning that the stomach pains he had yesterday were actually warning signs as part of his menstrual cycle it would be pretty terrifying.

"He's okay?"

"Fine, just a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, didn't want to tell you in case you called Owen"

"Well he is his doctor."

"Tosh. Ianto wants this kept private and you know Owen would only laugh if he found out about this"

"Fine I promise not to tell"

"Thanks Tosh" Ianto appeared out of nowhere with a tray of drinks and passed one to each of the women before heading down to given Owen his in the med bay where he was still dissecting a rather disgusting alien from last night.

At three o'clock there was a small rift spike in Newport, it looked like a piece of tech so Tosh and Owen had gone to pick it up leaving Gwen and Ianto in the HUB, Gwen was talking to them over the comms while Ianto went round feeding Myfanwy, the weevils and other aliens in the cells while it was quiet. As usual he left level three for last, it was empty save for one cell but it was the one place in the whole HUB aside from that room in the basement where he had kept Lisa that he would be happy never to see again. Today he carried the tray of soup-like food and a cup of tea into the cells he got the same reaction from the prisoner as always; Sven (at least that's who he claimed to be) pressed himself against the glass to watch Ianto walk towards him along the corridor then sat down and watched as he slid the tray of food through a hatch in the door.

"You should eat that while it's hot"

Sven cocked his head and looked at Ianto again, he looked manic, the telepath hadn't fared too well to the lack of mental activity down here when he was used to being surrounded by half the minds in Cardiff "You came yourself, usually it's the other one, with the mind full of parts and pieces, trying to figure out the tiny machines she can't see. Thinks she's so clever the tiny little bitch"

"Hey"Ianto turned to leave, not willing to stand here and have his friends insulted

"I'm sorry, it's just it's so quiet down here and I missed you" Ianto wasn't willing to believe that, whatever perverted fixation Sven had with him there couldn't be any real feeling behind it, they barely knew each other and Sven was convinced that he was in love with him.

"Do you have any idea what you've done to me, you turned me into a woman"

"That was my plan yes" Sven seemed confused, and also a little amused

"Shut up it's not fucking funny, my life has gone to hell and you won't tell be how to be me again"

"Why would you want to give up a gift like this, I gave you new life"

"No" Ianto smacked his hand against the glass wall of the cell, causing Sven to take a step back "You took my life away, I haven't seen my sister in a month, my nephew thinks I'm a science experiment gone wrong and I can't stop crying" Right on cue tears were pricking at Ianto's eyes and he turned around so that Sven wouldn't see him, damned female hormones meant that whenever he got angry he also got upset it had been even worse for the last week and this morning he had learned why.

"Ianto I..."

"No" He didn't want to listen any more and walked along the corridor back to the main HUB, he didn't stop there though and let Gwen know that he was taking the night off. She seemed worried but accepted it.

* * *

><p>He had been home for about an hour when his doorbell rang, he answered it to find Owen stood there with his hands in his pockets looking uncomfortable<p>

"The girls told you?"

"Yeah, sucks to be you mate" Ianto gave him a glare and walked back into the flat, Owen followed Ianto into the kitchen where he smelt the Welshman's home-made pizza and grabbed a slice

"Beer?"

"Course" They settled down on the couch with their pizza and beer and Ianto put a DVD on. Ianto was glad that Owen had come round, they hadn't spent much time together since he had been changed and Ianto thought that if he spent much more time with the girls them he would officially become one of them, last week he was horrified to find that all he had in his freezer was Hagen-Daaz and vodka so pizza and beer coupled with an Al Pachino marathon with Owen put him in a much better mood. Half way through Scarface Owen had fallen asleep on the sofa and Ianto had turned off the TV and gone to bed. When his alarm clock woke him up to a chorus of "I don't feel like dancin'" he swung his legs out of bed and for the first time in a month danced around his bedroom in his underwear, something that he used to do everyday.

"Mate it is too early for you to be singing that crap" Ianto had forgotten that Owen was on his sofa but grinned and continued singing louder than he had been doing before as he made coffee and got dressed for work, even getting Owen to join in with the last chorus. Owen was much more fun after his first coffee and they walked the half mile to work arguing about what was the best al pachino film and joking around to the extent that Owen chased Ianto across the plass as they raced each other to the invisible lift.

"I win!" Owen jumped the last five feet off the lift to be the first one into the HUB

"You're stupid and when you break your neck I'll point and laugh" Tosh came out of nowhere to smack the medic on the back of the head like a mother telling off her child.

"Well..." the medic looked at Ianto expectantly"Don't you have something you should be doing right now" Owen looked as if he might explode and Ianto just rolled his eyes and went to pay his forfeit for losing their bet.

"Hey Gwen"

"Oh hi Iant..."she was cut off when her colleague planted a kiss on her lips then turned around with arms crossed to glare at Owen.

"Happy now?" Owen couldn't respond as he was bent over laughing

"That was just wrong" Gwen had never felt less chemistry from a kiss in her life

"on so many levels, let's never do that again" Ianto offered her a smile and went to make the team coffee, except for Owen who was being demoted to decaf instant all day as punishment for his perverted brain.


	7. Jack's Back

**Chapter 7: Jack's Back**

* * *

><p><strong>AN As promised Jack is back, and because I love you there's an extra long chapter...actually I just couldn't justify splitting this chapter into one of drama and a part 2 that was basically a porno (as much as I would have liked to), anyway, enjoy^^**

* * *

><p>"Excuse me have you seen a Blowfish driving a sports car?" Gwen wished that was the weirdest question she'd asked a member of the public while working with Torchwood. They followed the car until Owen shot out its tires and the land fish ran into the nearest house. They took their positions and tried to figure out how to get rid of the alien without harming any hostages, the blowfish wasn't helping the situation and honestly seemed to know a little too much about each of them.<p>

"And that leaves me with the secretary, soft girly hands that have never fired a gun" He was right, since Ianto had changed he had never had to shoot anyone and hadn't even used the shooting range because it was no fun on his own. However if the blowfish thought because these hands were free of blood he wouldn't fire then he was sadly mistaken, Ianto had six weeks of pent up anger on his side and cut the overgrown tuna off in the middle of it's speech on how stupid they all were with a bullet in the brain.

Tosh looked at Ianto in shock, he had shot the blowfish between the eyes mid-sentence and the look in her best friends eyes was ice cold, like he had been aiming that bullet at someone else. Another thing that bothered her was that she was sure that she heard two shots but they were too close together for Ianto to have fired twice, taking a closer look at the blowfish there were infact two entry wounds, one between the eyes and one about an inch higher. She turned around to try to figure out ho else had fired and saw the last person she could have expected to see

"Hey kids, D'you miss me?" Toshiko wasn't the only person surprised. Ianto whipped his head around so fast that he got dizzy then once he was able to focus on the man stood in front of him he collapsed onto the carpet in a dead feint, Gwen and Owen's reactions were slightly less violent, Owen throwing something at the captain and Gwen giving him a good slap.

"Wow, you sure know how to make a guy feel loved, but I've gotta say it's been a long time since I've knocked someone out by saying hi" He looked at the woman on the floor and frowned, who was she and why was she with the team, surely he hadn't been gone long enough that they had recruited new members to replace him? She was a pretty good shot, probably a UNIT transfer by her haircut. He helped the team to clean up the house, retcon the family and sending the injured man off in in an ambulance, that sort of thing was usually Ianto's job and the team refused to answer his questions as to the Welshman's location.

Ianto Jones regained consciousness in the back of the SUV, he could see Gwen driving and his head was in Tosh's lap, he didn't know where Owen was and at the moment he wasn't too interested. Jack was back and his head was spinning.

"Don't even think about it!" Tosh put her hands on Ianto's shoulders to stop her friend from sitting up before he was ready, after a brief struggle he gave up and lay with his legs curled up watching the lights go by as Tosh stroked her fingers across his scalp soothingly like a mother would to her child. Ianto's hand rested on her knee and smiled, Toshiko always knew how to calm him down and right now he needed it. As much as he had hoped and prayed for Jack to come back in the last three months there had been a nagging fear that if Jack came back before Toshiko could turn him back into a man then Jack wouldn't want him any more. He may not be ready to jump back into bed with the man who had walked out on him but that was a different story from that man rejecting him because of something that was done to him against his will. He wasn't ready to face that and it was all he could do to keep his breathing steady as the lights of the road sped across the roof of the SUV and finally as the inside lights came on when Gwen parked them on the edge of the Plass.

Jack sat in the front passenger seat of the SUV itching to break the silence, the team were never this quiet without it being awkward but it seemed that while he was gone they had got so comfortable with each other that they could happily sit and enjoy the few minutes of quiet they had before Owen caught up with them in the stolen sports car and put the blowfish in the morgue. There was also the issue of the woman lying across the backseat, she was content to lie on Tosh's lap and the technicians behaviour after her colleague woke up made him think that maybe there was something going on between them. He held his tongue however to minimise the risk of being hit again tonight, as delicate as the Japanese woman was she could throw a hell of a punch and if the stranger's marksmanship was anything to go by then she could take care of herself too. They had been sat in silence for five minutes and Owen was inside the HUB while they waited for him. Still nobody had mentioned Ianto and it was too much for Jack. He moved to get out of the car but Gwen's hand on his own made him hesitate.

"Jack" She cast a glance at Ianto in the backseat and hoped that she was doing the right thing "There's something you need to know before you go any further" Behind her Ianto sat bolt upright and in the rear-view mirror she could see his trademark glare but she knew that he wouldn't' be able to do this himself right now and leaving Jack without answers wasn't fair even if the man had abandoned them.

"It's Ianto isn't it?" Jack unbuckled his seatbelt and turned so that Gwen couldn't see the tears shining in his eyes, during his time on the Valiant and especially in the few months after the Master had shown him footage of Ianto's bloodied corpse – killed by the toclafane while fighting the good fight, Jack had got through the day and found a reason to keep fighting in his desire to complete the Doctor's plan, turn back time and see Ianto again. If the Welshman had died before they could be reunited then he will have helped to save the world but it was all for nothing. In the side mirror Ianto saw the change in Jack's face and though he knew Jack didn't recognise him he put a hand on his shoulder to offer the little comfort he could until he could explain himself properly.

That bloody woman had her hand on his shoulder, he didn't know who she was. He didn't want to know who she was and he honestly didn't care, one way or another Ianto was inside the HUB, either working in the archives or frozen in the morgue Jack had to see him. He flew out of the car door and was half way to the tourist office when he heard someone running to catch him.

"Jack" It was her again, wasn't him shrugging off her hand as he left the car enough? He increased his stride but she matched it and Jack only had half a seconds notice before he was pulled by the lapels of his coat to face the odd woman following him.

"Cariad, stop this" Ianto didn't know what else to do, Jack wasn't going to stand still long enough for him to explain the long story of his life during the last few months so he did the one thing he knew he could do to show Jack who he was. He kissed him. For a moment the Captain resisted but the kiss was so familiar, he had felt those hands in his hair so many times and somehow the tongue ghosting its way across his bottom lip and begging permission to enter his mouth tasted the same even if the person kissing him looked totally different.

"Ianto?" Jack looked down at the person in front of him,she was tall, pale and wore black jeans and a red button down shirt. She was trembling and worrying her lip but Jack couldn't look away from her eyes, those ice blue pools where the only thing he had wanted to see for what felt like forever.

"You're?"

"A woman. I kind of noticed"

"When did this happen?" Jack wasn't 100% sure of how long he had been gone but it wasn't long enough for Ianto to have gone through gender reassignment surgery

"About six weeks now, but I'm still me and I" Jack cut him off with another kiss then hugged him to his chest before the Welshman could start babbling, Ianto stayed inside the warmth of Jack's coat and breathed in the scent he had missed, hooking his fingers into Jack's shirt to feel the skin beneath and prove to himself that he wasn't dreaming. For a minute everything was quiet then they heard Tosh calling from the SUV and looked up to see what was going on.

"Guys' we're not going back into the HUB we've got a rift alert" Tosh held up her PDA and indicated that they should get back into the car. She had moved to the passenger seat so that Jack and Ianto could sit together in the back. Owen had put the blowfish into cold storage and was driving while Gwen sat in the back fastening her seatbelt. They headed out to the coordinates of the rift spike and found a body which had been thrown off the roof of a multi story car park. They had thought it would be a simple case of catch the psychopathic alien but then something totally unexpected happened. Jack's wrist strap beeped.

* * *

><p>Stood on the rooftop after time had reset itself and John Hart had walked through the rift fissure and out of their lives all Ianto wanted to do was sleep. As if his day hadn't been stressful enough he had now been up for over twenty hours, had spent the entire night running around the city trying to save his team and now had to deal with Jack and the conversation they didn't get time for earlier.<p>

"Right, I'm going home, you said that we need to avoid our past selves for the rest of the night so if you want you're welcome to come back to mine but I'm just going to have dinner and go to bed" Everybody agreed that Ianto's was the best place for them to spend the night if they wanted to avoid themselves, except for Gwen who had gone home to spend an entire night with Rhys confident that she wouldn't get called into work as technically she was already there. Inside Ianto's flat Owen challenged Tosh to a game on the wii and Jack followed Ianto into the kitchen where he watched the Welshman dish up the Chinese food they had bought on the way in.

"So you've been a woman for six weeks, how's that working out for you?" Ianto responded with a death glare as they carried the plates to the table.

"Guys, food" He shouted to Tosh and Owen who were getting a little over competitive with the game "As soon as we work out how to change me back I'll be more than happy to get these nano bots out of me"

Jack's jaw practically hit the table, he hadn't seen nano gene technology since that incident with the Chula ambulance in world war two, the trouble they caused there had certainly put him off them so the thought of that same technology being responsible for Ianto's change put him on edge.

"Owen you're supposed to be a doctor how could you leave those inside Ianto for six weeks, don't you know how dangerous nano genes can be?"

The team stopped eating and looked at Jack in confusion, they had done their best to minimise the damage done during the first few hours after Ianto's change but until they knew how to reverse the effects Ianto insisted that they leave the nano bots be, he didn't want to risk not being able to get them back inside him to change him back when they figured out how to.

"How am I supposed to know that the little robots that I cant see and that'll change a bloke into a woman are dangerous. I'd never seen them before and I'm sorry but you were gone and we did the best we could" Owen was furious that Jack would just sit there and tell him that they hadn't done the best job they possibly could in a crazy situation. He grabbed his plate and took it with him into the spare room.

"Owen!" Tosh followed the medic and Jack and Ianto were left alone at the dining table pushing food around their plates in awkward silence. Ianto yawned.

"Hey you should get some sleep" Jack stood and walked over to the cupboard built into the wall and pulled out blankets and a pillow that he knew were stored there.

"What are you doing?" the only person who ever used those were Owen when he stayed but it seemed that he and Tosh were staying in the guest room from the medics loud snores.

"Your couch is much more comfortable than Owen makes it out to..."

"Don't be stupid you're not going to sleep on the couch" Ianto smiled at the fact that Jack was willing to give him some space but there was no reason for him to sleep on the couch when there was a king size bed in the next room.

"Oh, I thought you'd want..."

"Jack, the other week four people fit into that bed, I'm sure the two of us will manage just fine, god you're worse than Owen" Jack ignored the slightly upsetting idea of different people being in Ianto's bed but followed him into the bedroom and they settled in to get some sleep, both keeping to their own sides of the bed.

* * *

><p>At 3am Ianto woke up, he'd had a few hours sleep but Jack had got out of bed a few minutes ago and that had disturbed him.<p>

"You should be sleeping" Jack came back into the room with a glass of water but stopped in the doorway when he saw that Ianto had woken up and turned on the bedside lamp.

"You can talk, how often do you sleep at night?" Ianto watched as he got back into bed, wearing the sleep pants and his under shirt Jack was wearing more to bed than Ianto had ever seen before and that amused him, though he was sure that his own choice of pyjamas - the bay watch shorts and matching shirt – were no better.

"You seemed to know about the nano bots earlier" Ianto had wanted to ask him about this earlier but had been too tired.

"Yeah, I've seen them before, if you want I should be able to reprogram them from my wrist strap then they do all the work"

Ianto beamed at him and for the first time since 1941 Jack didn't feel guilty for unleashing the nano genes on the ill of London, without that experience he would not be able to bring that look of happiness to Ianto's face.

"When?"

"If you want we can do it at the HUB tomorrow, Owen will want to monitor you and it'll probably take a few hours for the changes to be complete but then you'll be yourself again." Jack was unprepared for the armful of Welshman that came hurtling across the bed towards him and captured his lips in a kiss. In the office block earlier Ianto had agreed to go on a date with him once he had his on body back but they had been planing to take it slow while Ianto learned to trust him again.

"What happened to taking it slow?" Jack asked as Ianto ran his hands under the tshirt Jack had been sleeping in.

"Shhh" Ianto's lips continued their trail down his neck and to his chest where he pulled the tshirt over Jack's head and tossed it aside. Jack didn't need any more encouragement than that and Ianto found himself pinned to the bed and gasping with new sensations. They both needed this, Ianto had felt so alone even with the support of his team since Jack left and even if he regretted it at dawn he couldn't tell himself that this was wrong now. Jack had been to hell and back in the year he was away and he allowed himself to get lost in the loving caresses of the man he had thought lost to him forever. Ianto may not trust Jack to stay with him forever but he trusted him tonight, trusted him with the body he was still so unfamiliar with but which came to life under the Captains hands, lips and tongue.

"Jack" Ianto woke up for the second time that morning but this time he was not alone, he was wrapped in the warmth of Jack's sleeping body and the weight of the captains arm was on his waist. As the man began to stir he did what he always did, he nuzzled Ianto's neck, kissing the pulse point that had come up in a bruise from his attentions earlier. "Jack stop it, I said Stop!" Ianto pushed himself into as sitting position then got off the bed, leaving a still half-asleep Jack sprawled on his stomach.

"Yan, what's wrong?" Ianto was stood next to the dresser pulling out his clothes for the day wrapped in the red sheet he had taken with him from the bed.

"I can't do this, we had a plan remember? Take it slow, go on a date and see where it went from there and I ruined it"

"Hey I'm not complaining" Jack picked up his boxers from where Ianto had thrown them and put them on before going to the closet to see that Ianto still kept a clean shirt, pants and a pair of braces there for him.

"Well you wouldn't but I'm not ready, before we can be us again I need to be me again"

"And I said I'd do that for you"

"And I need to believe you when you say you won't leave again." Tears shone in the Welshman's eyes and Jack felt a stab of guilt, in the back of his mind he knew that there was no way that Ianto would be able to forgive him for leaving right away but Ianto's behaviour earlier had given him reason to hope.

"Then I'll do what I have to do, I love you Ianto", Saying the words he had wanted to say when he first got back Jack thought everything he had gone through to get to this point was worth it. Finding out that the doctor had left him on purpose had cost him a dream, Surviving on board the Valiant had nearly cost him his sanity but the look on Ianto Jones' face when he told him that he loved him for the very first time was priceless.

* * *

><p><strong>ANRight, as I have now been up for 32 hours straight I am going into hibernation now, Just wanted to get this finished before I fell asleep and totally forgot. **


	8. Change me back, I want to party

**Chapter 8: Change me back, I want to party**

* * *

><p>Gwen Cooper walked across the Plass at seven thirty am, possibly the earliest she'd ever come to work but she had to get out of the flat. The romantic night in she had wanted had turned into a night of playing nurse...and not in a fun way. She had come home after the whole John Hart incident ready to relax and have an early night only to find her fiancé lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket and surrounded by discarded tissues. Rhys had a severe case of man flu and by when he woke her up at six o'clock this morning with is coughing she hadn't bothered trying to get back to sleep, she had left him in bed with a kiss and a promise to check on him later that morning. She hadn't expected anyone else to be at the HUB this early so rode the invisible lift down to the main level as she expected the tourist office to be locked,<p>

"Gwen, what are you doing here so early?" Jack, Ianto, Tosh and Owen were all stood around Tosh's station and looked up in shock at the new arrival, Gwen being early was almost unprecedented, the only other time having been when she had come in with Ianto two weeks ago. Once they got over their shock the others went back to what they had been doing before, which had apparently been arguing:

"It's not safe, we disabled them for a reason" Tosh was taking an alien looking device out of Jack's hands and put it back into the box of tools the team knew never to touch...Tosh was protective of her sonics

"I know what I'm doing" Jack almost wished he'd changed Ianto back last night to avoid this argument, Tosh and Owen were so obsessed with checking and double checking that everything was safe.

"And we're just supposed to trust that, fuck you Harkness" Ianto rubbed his temples at Owen's outburst, he trusted that Jack wouldn't have agreed to change him back of there was a serious risk to his safety even if he couldn't trust him about anything else right now.

"Stop" Ianto held up his hands and the team fell silent "This is my choice and I agree with Jack" Owen looked like he was about to argue but Ianto shot him a glare and he stalked off to the med bay, Tosh went after the medic to try and calm him down a bit.

Gwen was utterly confused, having gone home last night rather than back to Ianto's with the others. She followed Ianto when he went down to the gym and started stretching in front of the mirrors and asked him what she'd missed.

"Jack knows how to change me back"

"But that's good news?"

"He also told Tosh a bit more about the nano bots," Ianto repeated what Jack had told them over breakfast after they had had an argument which woke Owen and Tosh, he explained tat he had encountered nano genes before in 1941 London and told them about the damage they did there, from the data Tosh had on her PDA he had deduced that the nano genes inside Ianto were from an earlier point in time than the ones he had dealt with in the past, probably around the 33rd century by their design which made them even more dangerous. Once the medic and the technician heard this they had become reluctant to let Jack mess with the technology on his own and they had been arguing ever since.

"So what do you want?" they gave up on the idea of working out and just sat on the mats

"I want to be me again." Ianto was sick of looking in the mirror and seeing someone else there, sick of hormones and not being as strong as he should be. Jack's return only added to his confusion, somehow he could trust Jack with his life even if he couldn't trust him not to leave, he wanted to be himself to regain some control.

* * *

><p>Three hours later and the team had quietened down, Jack had spent the morning trying to apologise for leaving between the shouting matches which kept breaking out, they had called a truce for the time being as their yelling had upset Myfanwy and the Pterodactyl was now swooping around the HUB while Tosh tried to calm her down. Between Jack, Gwen and Ianto they had managed to persuade Owen into changing Ianto back but the medic had insisted that Ianto be sedated throughout the change, he had been unconscious when he was changed into and Owen was trying to keep the conditions as similar as possible. Ianto Jones was lay on the examination table of the med bay with his arms extended in front of him like some kind of zombie trying to touch the dancing lights that only he could see.<p>

"Is he?" Gwen had come down the stairs to see Jack and Owen taking a break from their constant arguments to laugh at the archivist's behaviour.

"High as a kite yeah, the nano genes seem to be fighting the sedative we gave him so all it's done is got him stoned" Owen's plan to sedate Ianto through his change had fallen through when it became apparent that technology rendered him resistant to the drugs in his veins.

"How much longer do you think it'll be till he starts to change?" Gwen took a seat on the stool next to the bed which Jack had vacated a minute earlier, ignoring the glare she received from her boss

"Any time now, I'm going to grab a coffee and I'll be back"

"Please Owen I'm begging you don't make me one, I nearly died after the last cup you made" Jack couldn't help but throw the comment at the snarky medic, while they had officially called a truce for Ianto's sake they still exchanged barbs.

"Damn, I'll try harder next time then maybe we'll get a few minutes peace"

Gwen had listened to the two men argue all morning but it seemed that Owen's comment had really hurt Jack, the Captain schooled his expression quickly but there had been a flash of hurt in his eyes before they returned to their usual icy blue. Gwen stood and motioned that the captain should have his seat back, Ianto lowered his arms and his eyelids drooped.

"It's starting, the nano genes are putting him to sleep so they can work" Jack's voice was flat as he explained what was going on but Gwen stood behind him with a comforting hand on his shoulder as he took Ianto's hand and settled in for a long wait. Jack was so close to getting Ianto back – his Ianto and now he was scared, Ianto's reaction when they woke up together this morning showed him just how much he had hurt the other man. Would Ianto still want him once he had his body back or had he completely ruined any chance of a real relationship? He looked down at the sleeping Welshman who had begun to whimper slightly with the discomfort of his body shifting and changing tiny flecks of orange light danced around him.

"Gwen?"

"Hmm" The Welshwoman stayed behind him but gave his shoulder another light squeeze

"How did this happen? Ianto never told me about what caused the change" He was lying, in the brief time they talked last night Ianto had answered Jack's questions about Sven and Jack was pissed, not only had somebody slept with his Ianto while he was gone but they'd caused him so much pain as well. Gwen swallowed and told Jack about the alien locked up in the cells of level three and sat with Ianto as Jack excused himself to go find Owen.

* * *

><p>Sven lay on the narrow bed of his cell staring at the same patch of damp ceiling that he had been focussed on for the last three days when he felt somebody approaching, he didn't know this person but the surface emotions he could sense had him cowering in the corner before they ever reached the glass wall of the cell. Jack glared done at the creature in front of him, so this was the man who had turned Ianto into a woman? He hardly seemed dangerous cowering in the corner but from what Gwen had told him of the man's stalkerish methods it was likely that he wasn't nearly as strong as he claimed to be, Ianto was afraid of Sven and wouldn't come down here because the man had made him feel powerless. Now Sven was going to get some of the same.<p>

"Drink?" Jack held out a bottle of water to the man in front of him, the anger which had surrounded him like a cloud was gone now and Sven couldn't sense any emotion from him at all. Sven accepted the drink gratefully, with all that had gone on nobody had remembered to bring him any food yet so he hadn't eaten or drunk since yesterday morning, within seconds the water was gone and Sven handed the bottle back.

"I'm going to ask you some questions and if I like your answers then I'll sort you out something to eat, okay?" The alien nodded, in the next ten minutes Jack learned his name, planet of origin and reason for coming to earth, Sven had no idea why he was so cooperative to this stranger but the man kept his promise and gave Sven something to eat so he didn't really care. Jack had just stood to leave the cell when Tosh came running down the corridor.

"What the hell do you think you're doing Jack?" The half smile on the captain's lips worried her but she could see nothing physically wrong with Sven

"We were just talking, I wanted to ask him a few questions and he was happy to help weren't you SvenFnau" The alien nodded mutely, his eyes were glazed over and as the two watched he fell asleep leaning against the stone wall of his cell

"What did you do?" Jack had never seen Toshiko so authoritative before and it looked like she might had copied a few tricks from Ianto as she stared him down, that look did its job and Jack let slip the information faster than Sven had done

"I dosed his water with something to make him tell the truth, I needed to know if he was safe to release"

"Release? He's a dangerous kidnapping alien who turned Ianto into a bloody woman! How could we release him unless..." She ran into the cell and checked Sven's pulse to see that he had gone into a deep sleep as the drug in his system did its work "You gave him the alien-strength RETCON?, we still haven't tested that it's not safe"

Jack walked away as Tosh called Owen on the comms, as they passed each other the medic gave him a quick shove before hurrying towards Sven's cell. Jack didn't really care, Sven hadn't given the sane thought to safety when he had used primitive nano technology to change Ianto's DNA so completely and this was the only way that an alien prisoner could ever be released from Torchwood, Sven looked human enough to live his life without their intervention and RETCON was the only way Jack could be sure that he wouldn't come back for Ianto.

* * *

><p>Tosh sat on the concrete steps of the med bay watching her sleeping friend, his changes seemed to be complete but after six hours asleep he had yet to wake up. Owen, Jack and Gwen had gone out for a rift alert twenty minutes ago – there was some kind of giant egg in Grangetown which was spitting blue goop at the locals. Standing, Tosh went up to the kitchen and made a cup of tea, looking at the state Owen had left the coffee machine in she wasn't going to risk touching it, Ianto was going to be angry enough as it was. She made it back down to the med bay just in time to see Ianto sitting up to stare at his hands.<p>

"Hey." His fascination with hands reminded her of the CCTV she had seen of him before he had fallen asleep "Are you still high?" He looked up at her and she couldn't help the grin that spread across her face at her friend being back to normal.

"When was I..." the memories of his drug induced fascination with lights and Owen's amusement at his state sent a blush across his face "Oh" He put a hand to his throat, hardly believing the voice that he had just heard, the hand moved to touch different areas of his face, his hair, and then travelled to his chest which was mercifully flat. Tosh looked on in amusement until Ianto stood and bounded up the stairs to capture her in a bear hug, they're both grinning but Tosh frowned and her mouth soon formed a pout.

"You got tall again" To demonstrate her point she came down a step so that he stood a few inches taller than her and Ianto looked down at himself.

"At least I'm not falling down this time, guess I'm already used to my height changing" he remembered falling off the examination table six weeks ago and struggling to regain his balance afterwards and for once was thankful to the nanogenes inside him, they had turned his life upside down but at least his feet were firmly on he ground this time. The clock being projected onto the wall of the med bay told him that it was six pm but the HUB was strangely quiet.

"Where is everyone?" What he could remember of the minutes before he fell asleep Jack had been at his side and he had hoped that the other man would be there when he woke up, he had promised to stay with him.

"Giant egg thing in town, they've gone to..." she was cut off by the alarms sounding and the cog-door wheeling open. Ianto found himself with an armful of Gwen who had run straight over to hug him leaving a bewildered Jack and Owen behind her. Owen looked tired and Jack was covered in some kind of goo.

"What?" Ianto had no idea what had happened but for someone other than Owen to be wearing the alien goo was unusual.

"Don't ask" Jack grumbled while Owen suppressed a laugh.

"Will I be cleaning that coat"

Jack looked down at his coat like he was seeing the damage for the first time" My coat" his face dropped and they all held back the laughter that threatened to show, they may not have forgiven their captain entirely but they couldn't pretend that his love for that bloody coat wasn't hilarious.

"It's okay sir, I've dealt with worse" Ianto couldn't believe how quickly he had fallen back into old habits but now everything was back to normal it seemed only natural for them to revert to their old roles in the team, and seeing the state of Jack's clothes Ianto could hardly just watch as the stains became harder and harder to wash out. He dropped Jack's coat off in a pile of laundry as Jack went into the showers to get the rest of the goo off and he went in search of something to wear that wasn't a hospital gown in his locker, The pyjama like outfit had been far too big when he put it on this morning but it had been necessary during his change because he was going to change size but now he was back to himself he just wanted to be back in his own clothes.

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later found a very frustrated Ianto throwing a pair of jeans back into a locker screwed into a ball with an angry shout.<p>

"What's the matter?" Gwen took in the sight of the flushed Welshman in a red shirt and black boxers "Lost your pants?" Ianto scowled at her attempt at humour

"I'm fat, my stupid jeans won't fit."

"which ones?" he retrieved the hated clothing and held them up for her to see

"ah, those jeans" Gwen walked past Ianto and reached into the locker and pulled out another pair of jeans from the middle shelf "Last time I saw you in those I swore you must have sewn yourself into them they were so tight, if they're too tight it's because you've finally been eating properly, you're not fat just healthy. She saw that he didn't believe her but was happy when Ianto put away the jeans that had always been a size to small if he was honest and pulled on the blue jeans she handed him then located shoes and stood looking in the mirror.

"It's all Rhys' fault you know" Ianto told her as he knelt to tie his shoes, he explained that before she'd started taking him home like a stray cat for dinner twice a week he hadn't been eating too much so it was Rhys and his irresistible lasagne that was to blame for his jeans not fitting.

"Ah yes, that fiancé of mine is a diabolical genius with an evil plot to make Ianto Jones fat" Gwen's sarcasm showed Ianto just how ridiculous he was being about the whole thing. He folded the jeans he had previously thrown into the locker and bent to stow them on the bottom shelf when they were interrupted buy a now clean Jack fresh out of the shower.

"Wow, what have I done to deserve the rent boy jeans?" Ianto flushed as Jack entered the room in nothing but a towel and reminded him of the nickname this particular pair of jeans had gained after Ianto had been propositioned six times while lingering on a street corner wearing those jeans when Jack was late picking him up one night after a weevil had interrupted their _not a date_ as Jack called it at the time. Ianto shot him a warning look but the Captain's attention was diverted when Tosh walked into the room only to freeze in the doorway, not expecting to have an audience when she came down to get changed.

"I sent Owen home to get some sleep, are we still on for tonight Ianto?" Ianto looked confused for a moment until he remembered their plans, it seemed like a million years since they decided to go clubbing yesterday morning.

"Of course we're going out, It's Friday night!"

"Five drinks for a tenner" They resisted the urge to high five but still got weird enough looks from Gwen and Jack. Gwen refused to go out with them – she and Owen had sworn they were possessed by nineteen year old lunatics last time the team went down to Club X for a night out and had refused to go back with them after that. Jack agreed to go with them and within ten minutes the three of them were dressed ready and heading out towards Charles street.

* * *

><p>Whatever Jack had been expecting when he agreed to go out with Ianto and Tosh to a gay bar it wasn't what he got, almost immediately after arriving the pair had disappeared off onto the dance floor while Jack sat it out and got a drink at the bar, the music not exactly his style just like the fruity alco-pop sitting untouched in his hand. He watched as Ianto and Tosh danced with different people, seeming to know a lot of them. He hadn't seen them so free before, one man was doing a strange dance move that didn't really fit with the fast paced music but it soon caught on and soon half of the dance floor were swinging their arms and hips in the same fluid motion.<p>

"What was that?" he asked when Ianto joined him back at the bar while Tosh carried on dancing with a couple on the dance floor

"It's called the dougie, Damon likes to start it off and see how many people copy him, it's a laugh" Jack chose to ignore the _Damon_ part, the tanned man who had been dancing with Ianto a minute earlier had already moved on to a new partner anyway so it wasn't worth it.

"I've got to say it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen" Ianto laughed and was glad to be able to talk to Jack without any of his old hurt getting in the way, they were relaxed and if dancing the dougie was what it took to make them forget their problems then that was what he had to do. He signalled Sid the bartender who lined up a dozen brightly coloured shots and smiled at Jack's shocked look, Tosh downed her shots then went back to dance and Ianto did three of his then held up the fourth until Jack picked up his own. Soon all of the alcohol was gone and it didn't matter that Jack would rather be dancing to Glenn miller than David guetta- they were on the dance floor moving like idiots with complete strangers doing a dance that couldn't be more out of place than it was here on a rainy night in Cardiff

* * *

><p><strong>AN So Ianto is himself again and he and Jack are starting to work through their problems... even if their methods are a bit _unconventional_. Things are going to get a bit heavy in the next chapter so I really felt the need to add a funny little chapter in the middle. For news on chapter development, and sneak previews see my fan fiction twitter Beka_Reynolds29 (I apologise to anyone I gave the wrong name to, I was very sleepy yesterday) **


	9. Accidents

**Chapter 9: Accidents**

* * *

><p>It was seven o'clock on Saturday morning and Jack suppressed a laugh as he heard a loud beeping followed by some colourful swearing coming from behind the door to his left, since he had started going out with Tosh and Ianto on a Friday night he had discovered that Ianto <em>really<em> didn't like his alarm clock on a Saturday morning, knocking on his way in Jack entered the room with a drink and a couple of painkillers to help get Ianto out of bed and ready for work on time. After they had all stumbled into work at noon the Saturday after their first night out – Jack should have never got into a drinking contest with that drag queen – Owen had played music around the HUB and made their morning ride in the SUV more turbulent than necessary just to make them suffer. It was the first time in decades that Jack had suffered so much after a night on the town and this time he couldn't even blame it on the hyper-vodkas. Nope, in 21st century Cardiff it was Jager-bombs that were causing the pounding in his head and Ianto's need to empty his guts into the toilet twice that morning. Owen and Gwen had both been out with their usually quiet co-workers at some point during Jack's absence and after one heavy night on the town they had both refused to repeat the experience – Gwen because Rhys had told her off because he had to pick her up from the police station when she had thrown bits of her kebab at PC Andy when she saw him on the high street – apparently it was funny at the time – And Owen wouldn't go back to Club X with them after they had made fun of the fact that he'd been drunkenly flirting with a man in drag all night. Jack had laughed at their stories but was honestly a little worried by Ianto's behaviour, he had promised to give the younger man some space while he made up his mind what he felt about Jack but that didn't mean that the Captain couldn't look after him while he was deciding.

So this morning for the fifth week in a row he was stood in Ianto's kitchen making toast and pouring orange juice while Ianto got dressed and Tosh groaned her way into the shower where she stood under the hot water until she felt alive.

"Did you sleep on the couch again?" Ianto walked across the lounge to sit at the breakfast bar where he could face Jack while he ate.

"Yeah" as Ianto mentioned the couch he touched the sore spot on his neck from where he had slept at a strange angle.

"You know you could have come in with..." He was cut off by a phone ringing, actually it was three phones ringing. They heard Tosh jump out of the shower to read the text as they picked up their own mobiles and read:

"Hoix in Bute Town, Gwen injured" They snapped into action. Tosh had thrown her hair into a ponytail and was dressed in two minutes flat and Ianto made sure everyone was armed from his not at all scary under the bed arsenal before they went running out of the front door and set off on foot.

* * *

><p>Running wasn't doing anything for Ianto's stomach but the fresh air and painkillers had cleared his head as they ran the short distance to where Tosh's PDA had traced Owen's call to. Ianto came running around the corner behind Jack and Toshiko and came face to face with three very hungry Hoix, two were eating out of a couple of bins – Hoix really would eat <em>anything – <em>and another was moving dangerously close to Owen's back while he tied off a makeshift tourniquet around Gwen's injured leg. Jack pulled his webley and fired off one shot between said Hoix's eyes which unfortunately started the other two out of their feeding frenzy and had them scattering. Jack and Toshiko followed one to a dead ended alley and Ianto chased one along a street where numerous cafés were opening for the breakfast rush.

Gwen sat in the back of the SUV where Owen bandaged the wound on her leg which had bled a lot at first but was actually quite shallow once he had cleaned it up. Jack had loaded the two Hoix bodies into the boot and was about to check on Gwen when Tosh reminded him of the team member he had momentarily forgotten, being so occupied with keeping the people in his immediate vicinity safe.

"Jack I can't get hold of Ianto, I've got a signal from his comms so I can track him but he's not answering me" Jack swore fluently then tapped the communicator at his ear:

"Ianto?" Was nothing bit silence "Damn it!" According to his wrist strap, Ianto had been in the same building for six minutes and hadn't moved in four. Jack ran to the place indicated on the map while Owen drove the half-mile in case they needed the SUV or its equipment. From the commotion inside the first café on the block it was obvious where the Hoix had been and when Owen entered the building with his med kit he saw Jack on the floor holding a bleeding Ianto surrounded but scared old ladies while the Hoix lay dead on the other side of the room covered in what looked like burns. The medic took one look at the gaping stomach wound and knew there was very little he could do, Jack was knelt in a pool of Ianto's blood and even if they got him to a hospital it would be too late to get more blood into him by the time they arrived but Owen was a doctor and as futile as he knew it was he snapped on a pair of gloves to do the little he could to try to help, he had just located the main point of bleeding when he found himself being pulled away from Ianto by a frantic Jack

"What the fuck are you doing Harkness?" Jack didn't say anything, just pointed to the mass of glowing orange specks which had surrounded Ianto's body, the young man arched and his face contorted in pain as the robots knitted his torn flesh back together.

"It's going to kill us!" one of the old biddies who had witnessed the entire thing screamed before switching into welsh and becoming hysterical, Gwen got the story out of her and translated for the team.

"Apparently Ianto came in after the Hoix which had gone running for the cakes and when Ianto shot it in the shoulder it got angry and swiped at his stomach, then there was some kind of wave of orange light..."

"Nano genes?" Tosh looked at Jack but the man had no more information than she did.

"I've never heard of nanogenes doing anything like that but I've reprogrammed them using 51st century technology and you used your sonics while you were working on them so honestly we have no idea what kind of modifications they made to themselves that we can't see, they're highly adaptive – they have to be"

Owen took his place back at Ianto's side and felt a regular pulse and normal breathing "He's just unconscious, we need to get this lot retconned and I need to get Ianto back to the HUB for tests, I really don't give a crap about you're tech theories I just want to make sure there's no damage done to Ianto. That alright?" Owen's doctor instincts told him that his patient was more important than any technological issue so he prioritised his actions in that order and the team mobilised, responding to his commanding tone.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Three hours later<strong>_

"So what you're saying is your scanners can't see anything"

"Yeah"

"And as far as you can see there's nothing wrong with me?"

"well no but..."

"Then why can't I go home?" Ianto had been sat on the examination table for two hours while Owen shook his equipment but still couldn't see anything as the nano genes were creating some kind of interference, a good old fashioned session of poke the patient failed to reveal any health problems either and Owen didn't really have any reason to keep Ianto here except for the fact that the man had almost died today.

"I don't want you going home alone, we've got no idea what those little bots are up to and until these test results finish processing I'm not declaring you fit for duty"

Ianto glared at the medic, he felt fine and couldn't see why it was a bad thing that the nano bots which had turned his life upside down had finally done something good.

"Owen go home," after the morning they'd had everyone needed some downtime, "you too girls" Tosh was grateful for Jack's decision and headed home to sleep off the rest of her hangover and Gwen was eventually persuaded to leave when Jack reminded her that a Saturday off meant a whole Saturday that she could spend shopping "I'll take care of Ianto don't you worry" Outwardly Jack seemed to be coping pretty well with the stress of the day but in truth he had been terrified, he honestly thought he's lost Ianto when he'd seen that pool of blood on the café floor and at the minute he didn't know whether to be pleased that the nano genes had been able to save the man he loved or terrified of what they were capable of, if they could roast a Hoix then they needed to look into hat other dangers the technology could present.

Ianto took a shower and came into the locker room to see Jack sat on one of the benches looking upset, the emotions of the morning had finally caught up with him.

"Is this what it's like?" he looked into the young man's eyes and Ianto sat down next to him and put an arm around I've revived in your arms so many times but I didn't know that it was so hard to watch" Ianto remembered all the times he had held onto Jack's body waiting for him to come back to life and understood how Jack must have felt today – Ianto had a fleeting moment of panic when he saw Jack's dead body that maybe this time he wouldn't come back but Jack had been grief stricken, when Ianto had come back he had been over the moon but he still wasn't sure where they stood. The uncertainty of their relationship over the last couple of weeks mirrored the fragile nature of life and it was all too much for the usually strong Captain who just wanted his Ianto back.

Ianto turned Jack's face towards him and grinned mischievously as he thought of the perfect way to cheer the man up. While he had needed the last few weeks to think Jack had been more considerate and thoughtful than Ianto had ever seen him and it was time that the hours Jack had spent taking care of him and the others paid off. Their eyes were locked until Ianto's lips touched Jack's for the barest moment then the captain was left confused as the Welshman pulled away. He raised an eyebrow at the deflated look on Jack's face and leaned in to speak into his ear

"Lose the clothes and find a place to hide. You have thirty seconds"

Jack crouched behind Suzie's old desk grinning with excitement while playing his favourite game, it wasn't a very good hiding place but being found was the whole point wasn't it?

"ready or not? Here I come" Ianto walked across the floor of the HUB taking in every detail, he had seen Jack behind the desk but teased like you did with a small child while playing a family friendly version of this game

"Hmm, I wonder where he could..." Ianto didn't have time to finish his sentence as Jack jumped out from behind the desk and caught his lover in an embrace. Things were just starting to get interesting when Jack stopped his trail of kisses down Ianto's neck as the man collapsed in a dead feint. After his ego had finished its victory dance at his feint-worthy kissing skills he lowered the man to the floor and watched as his eyes fluttered open.

"You okay?" Ianto didn't answer, just rolled his head to the side and proceeded to throw up all over the concrete floor.

"I'll take that as a hell no"

* * *

><p>Owen Harper resisted the urge to say "I told you so", usually he would be the first one to point out that he was right and the tea boy was wrong but this was a health matter and there was no time for jokes, his scans still couldn't pick anything up and there was no reason for Ianto to be vomiting – except for the kissing Jack part...but he didn't make that joke either, if Jack didn't punch him then Ianto would. He didn't really know what to do with the nearly naked pair of men who were sat in his med bay and had called him back from his pub lunch but he was thankfully saved from admitting this by the beep of his machinery as Ianto's test result's finished processing.<p>

"What does the beep mean?" Ianto fidgeted on the table feeling cold in just his underpants when he just wanted to go and brush his teeth to get rid of the vomity taste.

"means you should be quiet while I..." Owen stopped dead and sent a deadly look at an utterly confused Jack. He reached into a cupboard before pulling out a plastic cup and handing it to Ianto

"Go pee in this, I need a word with Jack"

"Just tell me what's..."

"now!" Jack didn't like the tone of Owen's voice and when Ianto came back with his pot the doctor put a sample into one of his many machines and turned back to face them.

"Right, I'm just going to come out and say this, In the blood sample I took earlier there is evidence of hCG"

"What's that some kid of drug, because Jack didn't spike me if that's what you..."

"Not a drug a hormone, specifically a pregnancy hor..."

"Fuck off Owen I'm not in the mood for this" he had never understood the medic's sense of humour but honestly this was a step too far, it wasn't even funny. The machine next to Owen beeped and they all looked at it.

"did you have sex with Jack right after he got back?" Ianto had no idea how Owen could possibly know that but he seemed to have found it out from the printout from the machine

"How did you know that?" Owen explained about how hCG levels rise during a pregnancy so could be used to date it and as he went into more detail he saw the information sink in for the two men. Jack was grinning, things were back on track with Ianto and they were having a baby, he restrained himself from breaking into a chorus of "happy days are here again" but was picturing a little baby with Ianto's eyes. Ianto on the other hand was less than happy, the nano genes strike back and once again he finds himself as a freak, as Jack and Owen start talking about ultrasounds and prenatal vitamins he feels something inside of him snap.

"stop it, stop it, stop it!" he pointed an accusing at Jack "you did this to me, and you're talking about it like it's a good thing and we're going to be a family well what about what I want? I don't want to be a freak any more Jack. I did that when I got turned into a bloody woman but this" he indicated his stomach "is too much." before Jack could argue he continued "there's no choice here, I want you to fix this Owen, give me a drug or I don't know an operation with a little vacuum cleaner or a bottle of gin and a hot bath. I don't care I just want to be me. I just want us to be us without all the crap that keeps getting in the way"

Ianto took a deep breath after he had finished and waited for Jack's reaction

* * *

><p>Jack couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this angry, a kind of all consuming rage that had sent Tosh scurrying off home and Jack down into the depths of the HUB to punch something until he could calm down. For the second time in his life someone was trying to take away his chance to be a father, but where he could still go to see Alice – so long as he called in advance and never told Stephen who he was – Ianto wanted to throw away their chance at parenthood before their child even had the chance to live. How could he make a decision like that so lightly? What gave him the right? Didn't Ianto realise that in this job this might well be his last chance to have a family? It's not like he was going to meet a nice girl and settle down when he was working all night most nights hunting down aliens. Jack vented his frustrations onto the punch-bag in the gym and after several hours of Jack's furious assault the wall bracket gave way and the bag crashed to the floor, Still unsatisfied Jack kicked it around the room for a few minutes until his anger ebbed and he went to take a shower, nursing his bruised knuckles as he went.<p>

* * *

><p>Ianto Jones sat on his bathroom floor trying to hold back tears as his phone informed him for the fourth time that Jack was unavailable. He left a message - though he had to use the speaker phone as he was too dizzy to concentrate on holding the phone and sitting upright at the same time – then emptied the meagre contents of his stomach which had been threatening to spill since he had sat up too quickly in bed trying to shake off his nightmare.<p>

_Ianto was in the lower levels of the HUB, in a cell block not unlike the ones where they had kept Sven; there were differences though, this one was overcrowded, with two or three moaning Weevils to a cell and the light's weren't working, only the emergency light lit the long corridor and at the end of the hall one cell was lit by one dim light. Behind the glass door stood a small boy who couldn't be any older than four or five dressed in dirty pyjamas who looked up at him with watery eyes._

"_Please don't leave me here Tad, I'll be good I promise, please don't leave me with the monsters" Ianto ran from the boys accusing gaze and found himself at the top of the stairs leading down into the med bay. Jack sat on the table cradling something, it was a bundle of blankets covered in blood and he had barely taken two steps into the room before Jack tuned on him, his angry expression just as terrifying as it had been this afternoon._

"_You killed him. Why would you do that Ianto? You said you loved me and then you... I wish I'd never come back to you Ianto" Jack pulled out his webley and fired._

Ianto had jumped straight out of bed and this was how forty minutes later he was sat on his bathroom floor having just hung up the phone for the fifth time when he heard a key in his front lock. Walking unsteadily into the living room Ianto was surprised to find his nephew attempting to sneak in without waking Ianto. The Welshman would have wondered why the teenager had come here instead of catching the bus home if he couldn't smell the vodka on him from across the room.

"You've been drinking" It wasn't a question. Ianto wasn't about to judge the boy, at sixteen he had been out in town every Saturday night too but he was glad that David had somewhere to go when he couldn't make it home.

"So have you" the Jones family humour made an appearance as David proved he could be just as dry as Ianto "but you must have started a lot earlier than me to already be home and throwing up at..." he craned his neck for dramatic effect as he checked the kitchen clock "eleven thirty"

Ianto didn't know how to respond to that, how exactly do you tell your nephew that you were pregnant with your boss' baby and you'd just decided to keep it? He didn't have much of a choice though, he couldn't do this alone and though David probably thought he was enough of a freak after the whole being turned into a woman thing he needed some family at his side. If Jack wasn't willing to listen to him then he was going to have to lean on someone else.

"I've not been drinking" David looked up at him over the coffee he had just made and they sat down at the kitchen table

"You're sick? Its not some kind of weird alien space flu is it? Cause if it is can you give it to me so I don't have to sit my exams next week?" Ianto smiled, David had accepted the existence of aliens fairly easily after he had been kidnapped by a group of them a few weeks before and Ianto hoped that this would be just as easy for him to accept. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second before saying the two words he honestly never thought he'd have to say.

"I'm pregnant."

* * *

><p>Jack ran across the plass trying to ignore his emotions, in the last five hours he had been overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a parent and having the chance to get it right this time, furious at the fact that Ianto wanted to take that away from him and now terrified that something might have happened to the man he's spent the last few hours trying to persuade himself not to shoot. Ianto's voice mail had ripped a hole through Jack's heart, the man had pleaded with him to pick up the phone, then there had been a slightly gross retching sound before Ianto spoke again, he had come back to the phone and told Jack that he was sorry for freaking out and that he just wanted to talk about their situation. Jack was left stood in his office feeling more than a little guilty that while Ianto had been begging him to pick up the phone he had been ignoring him and beating the crap out of inanimate objects. It wasn't the guilt that had him running the half mile to Ianto's flat though – it was the fear of whatever it was that had caused Ianto's swift change of heart, the man had sounded so broken and tired on the phone which was a stark contrast to the Ianto Jones who had been yelling at him as he left the HUB at six pm claiming that he never wanted to see Jack again. Jack had rung every buzzer on the external door to Ianto's block but didn't hear Ianto's neighbours swear at him as they buzzed him in because he was already half way up the stairs, being too impatient to wait for the lift.<p>

* * *

><p>David Jones moved around his uncle's kitchen making sandwiches while Ianto lay on the couch where he had ordered him to stay until he got back. It turns out one of David's girlfriends had a pregnancy scare earlier that year and the boy had done a lot of research; one of the things he learned was that morning sickness was related to blood sugar so as Ianto was feeling ill he thought it was best to take care of that before they went to bed. It wasn't anything fancy but as he carried the plates out of the kitchen he was glad to do something to help his uncle...who was currently sat holding hands with a strange man on the couch.<p>

"erm, I made you that sandwich" Ianto blushed and took the plate, moving away from the man in the military coat as David took a seat on the armchair. "so this is him? Would you mind giving us a minute Ianto"

Jack was impressed with the way this boy (and he was a boy no matter how well he held himself and no matter how much Jack pretended he wasn't intimidating him right now.) moved about the room, giving Jack the speech he hadn't heard since one of his date's rugby playing brothers had given him back in the eighties, it was pretty standard: hurt him and I'll kill you, they'll never find the body. But something about the delivery reminded him so much of Ianto and Jack fought the urge to grin, knowing that it wouldn't endear him to the family member he was trying to convince that he was a good person. He was eventually dismissed – and Jack honestly felt like he was being dismissed by one of his old army captains - and they said goodnight, David going into the spare room while Jack went into Ianto's.

"did you get the speech?" Ianto was leaning against the headboard with his legs extended out in front of him, Jack just nodded and sat down on the bed, toeing off his bots and throwing his coat onto the floor in a way that he knew drove Ianto mad.

"That's usually Rhi's job, you know Lisa almost broke up with me after Rhiannon scared her the first time they met. How did David do?"

"meh," Jack shrugged "He's scary, but you wouldn't let him kill me" Ianto leaned on Jack's shoulder and the man wrapped an arm around him.

"I'm sorry about before, I was stupid and scared and..." the rest was muffled as Ianto found himself pulled against Jack's chest. They didn't need to waste time with apologies, they had both been stressed and scared and once they got past that there was nothing to do but he happy about the prospect of becoming parents.

"We're really doing this?" Jack had held Ianto for hours but they were content to just lie there rather than risk ruining the moment. Ianto moved so that he was lying on his back and placed Jack's hand on his stomach then nodded and smiled.

"It's still...weird, I don't know if I'm used to the idea of being pregnant yet but a baby is a good thing. I'd sort of given up on the idea of being a dad after..."

"Lisa" Jack finished for him and pressed a kiss to his lovers forehead "I've got something I should tell you" If they were being honest then Ianto should really know about...

"Alice" Ianto surprised him by speaking before he could figure out how to tell him that he had a daughter older than his boyfriend.

"How did you?"

"When I first joined I did a lot of research on you Jack, and I promise that I won't take this child away from you. You'll get your chance to raise him properly"

"Him?" Jack questioned before pressing a grateful kiss to Ianto's lips

"Yeah, I think it's a boy" Jack raised an eyebrow but shrugged and went back to kissing his way down Ianto's neck, paying special attention to the pulse point where he knew that Ianto was especially sensitive. The Welshman moaned but managed to get out one last question before he gave in to what he was feeling

"So we're done with the heavy conversations?"

"Mm hmm" Jack's mouth was a little busy marking Ianto's pale throat to give a better answer

"good" Ianto surprised Jack by rolling him onto his back and moving on top of him "I've missed you"

* * *

><p><strong>AN WOW...That was a jam packed chapter wasn't it ?(even with the serious lack of jam) this is the final chapter of Let's Make a change, the story of Ianto's pregnancy and the life of the Harkness-Jones family will be continued in a new fic "Let's start a family" which I will be uploading from next week, i'm taking a few days to do a re-edit of this fic before I start posting anything new, i'm aware that quality has slipped a little recently and I do apologise for that.**

**Thanks so much to anyone who has alerted, subscribed and reviewed this fic :)**

**Follow me on twitter for fanfic updates and spoilers Beka_reynolds29 or facebook Rebekah Lyon-Cobb**


End file.
